The Death of Still Photography?
 

click on this photo to see it full size, compare it to a digital still - it's a frame grab from a video shot with the Epic RED M digital cinema camera. 96 frames per second.

Why bother shooting with a stills camera when you can shoot video and then pick from hundreds of thousands of frames for still images that are equal in quality to what you can shoot with a digital still camera?

interesting read http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2011/...still-picture/

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/wp-co...oseupFinal.jpg

Amazing!

funny gif:1orglaugh:thumbsup

http://thefuturists.files.wordpress....small-0403.jpg

That is one of my favorite photography blogs. :thumbsup

I saw Vincent LaForet do an incredible seminar at the CES earlier this year - mad talent, and he loves to share his tips and secrets. :thumbsup :thumbsup

Oh yeah, and I think still photography will still be around for awhile longer... :upsidedow

ADG

I just spent three weeks on set as a Camera Dept. PA working with the Red Epic M.

My partner and I are trying to secure to funds to purchase a complete package.

This is not the death of still photography. For one, a frame grab of a close up shot on HD video or even HDV tends to look pretty sharp and crisp, almost- but not quite- like a hi-res jpeg photo shot with strobes. Especially compared to a wide shot, the close ups tend to look sharper. So even though the resolution of this camera may be impressive, I believe that this is an atypical example.

Secondly, what content manager has time to sort through hundreds of thousands or millions of frames to decide on a hand picked selection of images without motion blur? It's easier to get dedicated hi-res photos shot with strobes to go along with the HD video. At least on shoots where there is control. For documentary, paparazzi and news gathering footage where there is no direction of the subjects possible, this may have more uses though.

"Again ? not a query I pose flippantly. But when my current instinct is to choose the Epic over my still digital camera when I see something beautiful (and having the choice of BOTH stills and video?) that?s an important statement for me to make publicly."

Photography used to be an art form. Just to get to the point where you could try to call yourself a photographer, it took thousands of dollars - tens of thousands of dollars in today's money. It was also expensive to take pictures with the cost of film and developing. Now anyone with a $300 camera can take professional photos, and then touch them in photoshop as required to make up for a lack of skill.

That's called progress.

what's a lens go for on that $50k bad boy?

The red cost about $250k if anyone wants to buy it for me I will shoot all there scenes for free. then what happens when they offer it in a $900 handicam... still photos rule
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?p=18243341#post18243341

You are comparing shooting a deer with a bow and arrow to using a machine gun ... :)

Anyone can take a handful of decent photos with a point and shoot camera for fun, for Facebook and the like. Even cell phone camera photos that capture a unique moment in time like say a tsunami in motion or a celebrity snorting coke can be very compelling and sellabe. But to consistently shoot full planned out photosets that are actually sellable for real money and make a profit on it the way a porn content producer does? That's a whole different story. Skill still comes into play in a big way. There's a reason there's only a small handful of us that can do this job for the bigger, more picky clients.

The RED Prime lens kit is $19k.

I just caught myself, we were using the Epic One Mysterium X. That particular camera itself is not $50k. You can get a nicely set up package for about $50k, but that includes a lot more than that actual camera.

I might be mistaken, because I've only glanced over the numbers...but I think that actual camera body itself is around $25k. The Epic M is almost $60k, and I'm not sure that it is available on the market yet.

The scrapped their small fixed lens Scarlet model and will be reworking/rebranding it as the Epic S, which will be in the $10-12k range.

We live in an area where there are a number of features filmed here each year, and there's only one company in town with one available for rental. I've embarked on an entirely new career and this is part of it.

right on. a local spot here that rents a red deluxe pkg for $875/day. i've rented from these guys but not a red! hell, i wouldn't know how to turn it on.:1orglaugh

http://www.bestbetcamera.com/cameras....html?sef=hcfp

While I agree with everything you say, one thing about today's aggregate consumer tastes kind of throws it out the window:

The sites I get the best ratios on (better than 1:200, gay content) are the one's where the camera shakes, shots are out of focus, etc. I'm seeing an average of 1:1000 -- or sometimes worse -- on the perfectly shot studio stuff.

The good news is that what consumers want is constantly cycling and we'll be getting back to the better professional stuff at some point.

Thank god for Student and Home Equity loans :winkwink:

I didn't get to do much with it, but watching them it seemed to be pretty easy to operate. Turning it on...I was allowed to do that, once. The only real pro was the DP, the other kids in the camera department were just that, young'ins all right out of film school or that 1 year film bootcamp they have in NYC.

I poked around one my firewatch day while everyone was eating and I got stuck having to sit and guard it.

It's nice to be in a position to be able to do this stuff and not have to worry about the fact that it actually costs me to get out there and work and learn something new after 10+ years in adult. My nanny costs me twice what I get paid to work on set.

here is the real problem, most people do not know how to light, so with shitty lighting you will get a shitty pic no matter what camera you are using.....then what do you do after you spent 900 a day of 350k for the camera. it is all light and lens, nothing else matters,,, your obvisouly not a photographer or a cinematographer mutt.

he might be a pornographer though...

Paul Markham will explain you :winkwink:

sure thats a great still for a vid pic... but its nowhere close to stills.

What? Mutt, you made this threaD?

Read the guy's blog, read what ADG wrote about him, this guy has decades of experience with digital stills and videography - he is on the cutting edge. He's asking the question, I'm just repeating it here.

kill mutt!

ok ill read it. I was simply going on the picture and reference.

I just listened to the directors commentary for Company Men and John Wells said they almost filmed digitally with the Red camera. The only reason they did not was because the cinematographer had never used it before. But that his next project was digital and that pretty soon everything in hollywood will be done digitally. The one thing about that screen cap is that it is maybe half the resolution of 35mm. pretty soon everything will be done at a higher resolution.

Yea decent read... RED is really good and has always been since they came out.

however i still stand by my statement. It's grabs are nowhere near a properly shot still.

Ive always liked their website. Its gettingoutdated now but it kicked ass when it came out red.com

Shit, thats nice but I use a little Canon HV30 and the screen grabs are still awesome. 1080x720 and clear as fuck.

http://www.red.com/experience

Red is nothing you shoot gonzo scenes with.

and without a clue in post production it's useless

That doesn't even take into account all the independent films that are being shot on it. I'm on 4 feature shoots between now and October. All are being shot on RED. All with budgets around $250k.

how'd you get those gigs? :)

Damn that is amazing. I bet it's pretty expensive though

Fine art needs stills.

Mutt, I'm not going to schlep a big fucking video camera all the way to Napa Valley to shoot landscapes at 96 fps when my Hasselblad XPan already does an outstanding job. And why shoot video to get a still of a non-moving subject anyway?

The guy has a point with the sports photography--it does make it easier to capture the sporting decisive moment. I suppose one day though someone will come up with "Decisive Moment" software that we can load into a camera, and it'll take photos that would make Henri Cartier-Bresson look like Donny Long.

BTW, I read this article a while ago, and thought he was just trying to be provocative. I read LaForet's blog occasionally, and he's always struck me as being a bit of an ass clown.

i have know laforet for years. he is a great craftsman

Wow!!!!!!!!!!

Thomas Cummins has been doing some great work lately.

I love this shot.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasc...ream/lightbox/

Here's another good one.
http://thomascummins.com/gallery/zoom/

amazing... :thumbsup

The main point is motion blur, in motion pictures the normal exposure time is about 1/50 sec, so that moving objects blur, this gives the illusion of motion on the screen. The shots join up. Moving objects look like they are moving without flicker.

1/50 second will result in a lot of shots with too much blur for still use.

If you decrease the exposure time the pictures will be sharper less blur but the motion will stutter.

Photography is quite safe, it is about capturing the moment.

Cinematography is about change. That is why everything about cinematography is about moving the camera, moving the actor in and out of light, explosions, compression and expansion of time.

amazing quality :)

I have an Epic M on order. The price is $58,000 and it comes with everything you need except for lenses.

http://www.red.com/store/epic/product/epic-m

The Fixed Scarlet 8x is not scrapped. It will be out sometime this year for around $6,000 to $7,000. There will also be a Scarlet Removable version too that does not not come with any lens at all for around $3,000 for the body. That should come out late this year or early next. Scarlet cameras have a 2/3" sensor and a max resolution of 3k.

The Epic X is the same as the Epic M, but will not be hand machined. Epic X should be shipping this year at a price of $28,000 for the body.

Epic S is $11k to $12k and is like a low powered Epic X/M. Same resolution, but not capable of 120 fps @5k or 300fps @2k.

Epic X/M will be upgradable to the Dragon sensor in 2012. No one knows the specs for the new sensor yet. The Epic S will not be upgradable.

Here is the Epic M package:

http://www.red.com/system/products/d...png?1302496373

Carry on... :)

But how much movement in that?

what are you going to do with the Epic M? porn? mainstream? what's your business?

Oh, and ~1000 Epic Ms have shipped worldwide including 50 to James Cameron and ~35 to Peter Jackson.

Rental to start. They rent for $2,000 to $2500 per day right now. A good friend of mine is a DIT. He will go everywhere my Epic M goes. I should be able to earn the package cost back within 90 days from the time we get the camera. We have a few clients lined up already including one porn client.

Once the rental market gets too competitive, after Epics are shipping in mass, we'll have a turnkey Indie production studio in full swing. We invest in gear and post facilities for an equity position in Indie projects we like. Of course there will always be some fee for our gear and services even if it's extremely low.

First one I got off of craigslist and it just snowballed from there. From the first one I landed another and from that I got two more lined up. There's also a job board for the industry called Mandy, that is loaded with production jobs (especially if you're in NYC or LA).

There's a small movie studio here in town. I say small in that it's a local small business, but they maintain about 1,000,000 sq ft of an old Kodak plant. It's pretty impressive for a small town, but being that we're home to Kodak...we have a bit of history with motion pictures.

I'm back in school studying film and digital cinematography, so I'm sure being a student helped out a little bit too.

thank you :thumbsup

There is a lot of full frame Cameras coming out, the Sony F3 at $17,000 and now Sony are bring out a camera with the same sensor at half the price.

Alexia is taking most of the professional work, there is going to be a lot of very cheap cameras soon.

In the hands of a good camera person all these cameras are capable of near cinema quality.

You mean Alexa? Nearly every major hollywood film in production right now is shooting with RED Epic cameras. This includes the new Spiderman reboot, The Hobbit movies, Avatar 2 and 3, the Total Recall reboot, Ridley Scott's "Prometheus", Bryan Singer's "Jack the Giant Killer" and that's to name a few... Once Epic is in full production it will go from dominating Alexa to destroying it...

the emphasis is on "near" - Red IS cinema quality

i get pretty decent grabs from my Vixia HF S200 and use them on both tours. i shoot stills for Chica's Place but need grabs for the Gloryhole site because i don't want to be snapping pics during the video. the Gloryhole grabs aren't as nice because it's lower light but my members still enjoy them.

the grabs from 5D video are pretty damn nice!

All those expensive Red cameras aren't gonna mean much anymore (for pic captures) and all our expensive still cameras won't be much either when this comes out this year:
http://www.lytro.com/picture_gallery

I've got about 8 grand (maybe a little more) in my Canon set up.
And I'm pretty sure the Ltyro camera is going to make that obsolete.

It may not happen as quick as you think. Lytro photos are quite low resolution from what I hear and they are nowhere even close to capturing motion. I think it will be a gimmick at first, but the idea does have the potential to shake things up a bit, but not for the foreseeable future.