The Coming Earthquake in Photography - Frame Grab Photography

Nowadays instead of Googling articles I find interesting, I just trawl thru the various blogs. Mostly photoblogs like Senor Enrique's (http://www.senorenrique.blogspot.com/ ). I forayed into his del.icio.us link had a quick look. Clicked on Luis Liwanag's Street Documentaries (http://pitikbulagdokyu.blogspot.com/ ) and ended up reading one his blurb and the link to this article... wheew. BTW Luis Liwanag, a Filipino photojournalist, has this penchant for old school photography. He likes, as I do, film cameras (those that you do need to develop the film and the photograph!) and has a Leica camera and some Russian lenses.

I guess that is the reason he linked this article. It's like digital vs traditional film photography. I call it "frame-grab photography". All you need is a high definition digital moving camera, keep rolling as far as your memory (or blu-ray disc) can go. Re watch the whole "movie" and freeze frame grab the images you wanted to print or "capture" in stills. It's like cheating for those purist. Anyway, here is a snippet of the article:


"If the change from film to digital was the equivalent of a magnitude 5 earthquake, the changes to photography in the next 10 years will be equivalent of a magnitude 10.
The Digital Journalist, the monthly online magazine for visual journalism, has been predicting many of these changes for the past 10 years. In 1997 we stated that the days of the use of film were coming to an end. We also said that in the future photojournalists would no longer be shooting still pictures, but instead would be using video as their prime medium of acquisition.
All those things have already happened. Still cameras that shoot film have already been abandoned by most manufacturers. Increasingly, newspaper photographers are being asked to shoot video for Web sites.
These seismic shifts, as we are already witnessing, will literally change the way photographers take pictures and how they are displayed.
Of course, in the next 10 years there could be a third world war, in which case all bets are off, but certain evolutions are already too far along to make it unlikely they will be stopped.
First, most of the major camera manufacturers that are now associated with still photography will probably be out of business by 2016. Of the majors now selling cameras, I would put my money on only Canon to survive. That is because they have a farsighted video division, which will provide the research and development that will be a key to their survival. Already, Sony is moving to become the number one still-camera company. Their newest top-of-the line digital still cameras are based on designs from Konica, a company they absorbed.
However, it is video that will undoubtedly become the main means of acquisition in photography. Today, almost all the manufacturers of prosumer video cameras have moved to High Definition. These cameras, off the shelf, are capable of delivering a 2-megapixel still image. The Dallas Morning News is now equipping their still photographers with Sony Z1U video cameras, and they have created an algorithm that allows those frame grabs to be boosted to 16 megapixels, which only two years ago was the maximum you could get out of a professional 35mm camera. The Dallas Morning News is regularly running 4- and 5-column front-page pictures from these video grabs. Then, they put the streaming video on their Web site."

Read the whole article by Dirck Halstead by clicking the title above.