Robert’s Photography Blog

Photography has already gone through one mega trend already in the last 10 years. - the rapid adoption of digital SLRs, digicams, digital camcorders, and the explosive evolution of photo-editing software. The speed of the digital revolution left many experience amateurs and pros struggling to catch up. Is the shift to video another photography tsunami?

Video used to be distinct from still photography. Either the bailiwick of the professional news media or consumers looking for a gimmicky camera to make home movies usually to document the lives of their children. YouTube and it’s subsequent acquisition by Google changed everything for the foreseeable future.

As Dirck Halstead points out in the The Digital Journalist, newspaper photographers are increasingly being asked to shoot video for web sites. He goes on to point out that video cameras now all feature a 16:9 “wide-screen” aspect ratio, the old 4:3 box that we used to associate with movies will be gone. This will force still photos to be shot in horizontal format in order to fit into media layouts designed for videos.

What about me? After 20+ years of doing only still digital photography, I am expanding into video. Not the pro stuff - just good enough to supplement my event coverage with a few YouTube videos. I have not decided on a camcorder yet. However, I am looking at the recently introduced AVCHD high-definition camcorders available from Canon, Panasonic, and Sony.

Will my videos be any good? Don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.

Reference Links
The Coming Earthquake in Photography
The Status of Still Pictures