If you are reading my words here, I am willing to bet you have a digital camera. If you do, you may also have a digital camera that shoots stills as well as video, presently purveyed by consumer “point and shoot” models. If you have a video camera you may also have a camera that can shoot a moderate resolution still image. Convergence. If you are a professional photographer, with expensive, high-quality equipment, you may not have these dual purpose devices, yet. Most DSLR (digital single lens reflex) cameras do not have video functionality, even though the imaging technology is similar. In fact, the earliest digital cameras were essentially video cameras that captured a still image by blending a couple of interlaced video frames into one still image.

Leap ahead to 2008. Let’s look at some recent signs of convergence that I’ll be exploring in upcoming columns:

    *      Last fall Casio announced a new Exilim model still camera that will shoot bursts of 60 frames per second (FPS), JPEG. That is certainly fast enough for stacking stills into Photoshop CS3 Extended, to output to video. The camera will also shoot video at 300 frames per second, fast enough for slow motion video projects. All in a consumer oriented form factor (and presumably a consumer friendly price).
    *      Video cameras are incorporated ever increasing still image capabilities.
    *      Prominent photography magazines have begun to feature articles on the still image capabilities of video cameras.
    *      Software companies, such as imaging industry leader Adobe, have incorporated tremendous video functionality into, previously still-oriented, Photoshop with the introduction of Photoshop CS3 Extended last year (to be fair, Photoshop CS2 had some excellent video functionality built in as well).
    *      Apple is turning handheld devices into hubs for both still images and video, and mobile phones in general are becoming multimedia devices.
    *      Televisions are evolving from a moving-picture-only device into a place to view still images as well, via card readers, Apple TV and iTunes, WiFi enabled cameras, and so forth.

The list goes on, and will go on, with new industry announcements and we’ll watch some of them here as well.

(Posted by Steve Weinrebe, Copyright 2008, All Right Reserved.)

For the past many decades the moving image and the still image have prospered independently. When a young person was interested in images, usually they would make the choice to pursue film school or photography school, and then to pursue either a career in film or video, or go in the direction of still photography. Each of those avenues had myriad career paths, and each career path could take years to master.

Enter the computer, and digital imaging. When I first became professionally involved with digital imaging circa 1991, scanning slides into Photoshop to create photo-illustrations for magazine covers, I started attending Mac user groups. I was struck by the way different professions were pulled towards the magnetic core that the Apple computer and Photoshop had become. One Mac user group I attended was held in a hospital’s amphitheater, populated largely by doctors, and the talk was all about photography and Photoshop! Another user group was attended by architects and graphic designers (who were, at the time, wary of anything not vector based). Clearly when so many industries are using the same tools, there is going to be a convergence of industries, lateral integration of jobs (and sadly the loss of jobs). I use a computer and Photoshop; my client uses a computer and Photoshop; at what point is my customer going to say, “Hey, I can do that, and better yet I can make more money doing that myself…”? Integration, Convergence.

Here we are in 2008, with digital imaging standard fare in the aforementioned trades. There have been sea changes, caused by digital imaging, in both still and motion picture photography, as well as countless other industries including graphic design, medicine, law enforcement, architecture, real estate, and the list goes on. For photographers and videographers especially, there have been several wake-up-calls in the past year alone, that are worth paying attention to and exploring.

When a young person asks me for advice on getting into a career in photography, the first thing I say to them is “learn everything you can about video.” By the time someone has asked me that question they are well along the learning curve in the art of the still image, but making money from still images is another matter and there is no use pigeonholing a start-up career in the visual arts. The devices we use to make images, the software we use to process images, the devices we use to view images, all are capable or becoming capable of handling both still and moving images.
 
The future looks bright for a convergence of the two media, yet there are many pitfalls and market forces that will determine when and how the convergence of still and moving images will come about. Send along your comments and ideas. Let’s explore some of the issues and evolving technologies that are leading still and motion picture photography on a converging path. I suspect even the manufacturers would like to hear from the creative community on this subject, since they are spending great resources in developing products that are ushering convergence onward.
(Posted by Steve Weinrebe, Copyright 2008, All Right Reserved.)