It leads to a number of links on the subject including Red's announcement it plans to launch a DSLR, at $17,000.
Some note that still landscape photographers will be the last to embrace this combined technology.
Interesting times.
Dave
Posted by Steve Foss on September 3, 2008 at 1:12 PM
The ability to capture moving images at such high quality and to pull out whichever I want to offer as high quality prints will be a big deal to me as a wedding photographer, because one camera will allow me to capture both products at the same time. And that will allow me to offer clients both DVD and images. Nice, whenever it really shows up affordably.
For nature applications things are a little more murky for me, and I don't yet understand if a combo camera would look more like a DSLR that will work with all my lenses or more like a digital videorecorder.
There are also some applications I'd like digital video for, such as an endless loop of water trickling through a rocky, mossy creek to go on my home page and clips of myself working with other photographers during photo excursions/workshops for the Web site, as well. Of course, these are things already available with current digital video technology.
Posted by Robert Fisher on September 3, 2008 at 1:48 PM
The problem is that the quality won't be that high. You can pull stills from video but they're only a few megapixels and don't look that good. There are video cameras (leaving Red out of the discussion since that's an entirely different animal) that record still images but, I think, only in JPEG and you have to stop recording video, switch to still capture, then switch back. If it's a timely moment, it's quite likely to be lost.
There are other problems with HD video and flash memory as well. The current standard, AVCHD has an effective bit rate ceiling which limits the quality of the video. You end up with blocky compression artifacts and movement that isn't entirely smooth. The Nikon D90, while able to capture in HD can only capture to 720, not full 1080. Until a better standard for capturing HD to flash memory is developed, tape will still be the better solution.
Recording HD video to flash memory eats up a lot of card space too. Using 2, 4 or even 8GB cards won't leave a lot of room for a combination of video and stills, especially if the stills are captured in RAW.
Sure compact digicams have had this capability for several years and yes most current video cameras allow you to capture stills as well but the quality in both cases isn't that good. Like any tool that's multifunction (cell phone, printer/fax/scanner, etc.) there have to be compromises in one or more of the included functions.
I know a lot of people are crowing about this new feature in the D90 but I, personally, think it's a waste of circuitry. If I want to shoot video, I'll buy (and recently did) a dedicated video camera. I want high quality out of both capture methods, not compromised quality.
EDIT: Doing some reading elsewhere I found a commentary about the D90. It doesn't even record in AVCHD but rather MJPEG which is an even lower quality format than AVCHD. There are a lot of other problems with it too, including using a frame rate that's not compatible with many video editing packages available.
Discussion
2 replieshttp://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showforum=46
It leads to a number of links on the subject including Red's announcement it plans to launch a DSLR, at $17,000.
Some note that still landscape photographers will be the last to embrace this combined technology.
Interesting times.
Dave
For nature applications things are a little more murky for me, and I don't yet understand if a combo camera would look more like a DSLR that will work with all my lenses or more like a digital videorecorder.
There are also some applications I'd like digital video for, such as an endless loop of water trickling through a rocky, mossy creek to go on my home page and clips of myself working with other photographers during photo excursions/workshops for the Web site, as well. Of course, these are things already available with current digital video technology.
There are other problems with HD video and flash memory as well. The current standard, AVCHD has an effective bit rate ceiling which limits the quality of the video. You end up with blocky compression artifacts and movement that isn't entirely smooth. The Nikon D90, while able to capture in HD can only capture to 720, not full 1080. Until a better standard for capturing HD to flash memory is developed, tape will still be the better solution.
Recording HD video to flash memory eats up a lot of card space too. Using 2, 4 or even 8GB cards won't leave a lot of room for a combination of video and stills, especially if the stills are captured in RAW.
Sure compact digicams have had this capability for several years and yes most current video cameras allow you to capture stills as well but the quality in both cases isn't that good. Like any tool that's multifunction (cell phone, printer/fax/scanner, etc.) there have to be compromises in one or more of the included functions.
I know a lot of people are crowing about this new feature in the D90 but I, personally, think it's a waste of circuitry. If I want to shoot video, I'll buy (and recently did) a dedicated video camera. I want high quality out of both capture methods, not compromised quality.
EDIT: Doing some reading elsewhere I found a commentary about the D90. It doesn't even record in AVCHD but rather MJPEG which is an even lower quality format than AVCHD. There are a lot of other problems with it too, including using a frame rate that's not compatible with many video editing packages available.