Flickr+Video

How much longer will the still silent image be with us?


Flickr news: "Video! Video! Video! The rumours are true and “soon” is now. We’re thrilled to introduce video on Flickr. If you’re a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream.."

Keith Jenkins at the Washington Post writes: "I've been part of the Super Secret Beta for the last couple of weeks. I think this is going to ROCK the world of photography. Unlike YouTube this really is an extension of the Kodak moment to moving pictures. Short, sweet pictures that move!"

It's the beast of convergence again. My latest Calumet catalog talks about still cameras eventually being replaced by video cameras with enough resolution to also be still cameras. Imagine not trying to capture that decisive moment because you captured every moment.

3 comments:

R. Kneschke said...

And after we can capture still images with our video cameras, we also will be able to make phone calls and listen to mp3s with them... ;-)

Andrew Condon said...

Nah, i don't think this will do anything at all to diminish the still silent photo. I have no doubt that video cameras will eventually become good enough to extract still images when required but that is a different thing from saying that a short video could replace a still image.

The still image freezes a moment (or period of time in the case of longer exposures) and thru composition and DoF choices communicates something about what was important in the scene to the photographer, and most importantly allows the viewer to experience this distillation at their own pace.

Video, in contrast requires that the viewer surrender to the original timeline and greatly weakens the compositional elements noted above. In many cases a film strip of stills is more revealing anyway.

That's my $0.02, probably in ten years it will sound risibly short-sighted!

Chuck said...

Check out the "Red" camera at http://red.com higher than motion picture film resoulution with digital raw lattitude. And we know that 35mm still cameras came about from 35mm motion picture film. It's happening, although far from the reach of even a serious enthusiast or most pros for that matter.