Canon’s much-ballyhooed but
not
universally welcomed 5D Mark II also (and this is a new thing for SLRs)
operates as a high-def videocam. There are two videos linked from
The
Online Photographer and they are mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly
beautiful. But it won’t work for you. The pictures you take with this camera
will almost certainly look great with little effort, while your videos will
require huge effort and probably still end up lousy.
[Update: The comments, after only a few hours, are outstanding, full of
erudition and common sense. Check ’em out.]
[Also: See Tim O’Brien’s two-parter in response:
Getting
Started with Video and
Part
2: Steady Shooting.]
Skill · The first reason they’ll look lousy is because there’s a whole lot of skill and practice that goes into making good video, and most of us don’t have it. You can get it, sure, and who knows, you might even turn out to have some talent, but count on months of work to get your chops down. Still, that’s not the real problem.
Tools · A poor workman blames his, they say. Well, when it comes to video, I am a poor workman, and I do blame them. For still photos, there’s iPhoto which does more or less exactly what a casual photographer needs, and is easy to learn and operate. And if you’re serious, there are Aperture and LightRoom, which allow you to process huge numbers of photos in almost no time, given a reasonably powerful modern computer, and get really great-looking pictures.
For video, there’s nothing remotely close. iMovie would like to be an iPhoto analogue but it’s an awkward, complicated, klunky piece of software that doesn’t make the easy things easy. Final Cut Pro (and the cut-down Final Cut Express) are tools for the serious, and I mean really seriously serious. They are massively complex, the manual is over a thousand pages, and nothing is self-evident.
On top of which, processing video so that you can actually watch it, whether on your computer or TV, is insanely time-consuming, and there are dozens of settings, and usually you don’t get it right first time.
I would advise watching the behind-the scenes video on the making of Reverie to get a feeling for the amount of work that went into that piece.
Speaking Personally · I have two beautiful children in their formative years, and also a high-def videocam, but it’s mostly a write-only medium. I pull it out from time to time to capture something that seems like it ought to be memorable, but the process of actually processing it so that anyone else can watch is so daunting and failure-prone that the data mostly just sits in a closet, ignored.
I’ve whined before about Video Pain; argh, I see that was four months ago, and I haven’t taken another run at the problem.
What About the 5DMkII? · I don’t know. It might be the right camera for you. But don’t buy it on the basis that you’re gonna be pumping out pro-quality video anytime soon. Unless, of course, you already have the expertise and tools and are willing to invest hours of work for a few minutes of video.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Speed (Sep 27 2008, at 15:58)
For decades Kodak sold lots of 8mm movie film which was used in not-very-good cameras and for which there were no editing tools beyond razor blades and tape. Then came equally uneditable VHS tape which, as bad as it was, spawned a TV show.
And now we have a DSLR that makes very nice pictures and for no additional cost also makes very nice videos. I don't see a problem here.
Maybe there's an opportunity for some bright people with a few dollars behind them to develop some nice reasonably priced editing software for the masses.
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From: crayz (Sep 27 2008, at 16:54)
Do you think this situation is permanent, or will change in the future with faster computers and better software? If the latter, it would be worth taking the best video possible and putting it in a closet until it can be edited more easily
There are a lot of fleeting moments in life that seem worth recording
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From: Chris (Sep 27 2008, at 17:34)
So I bought an iMac hoping that software like iPhoto and iMovie would be the answer to this same problem. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
Fortunately, I found a very decent deal on a copy of Windows Vista. It runs like a champ on my iMac, and Picasa and Windows Movie Maker have actually turned out to be great pieces of (free) software, both of which just plain blow away their iLife analogs.
Incidentally, in trying to find decent software to do photo and video, I tried a bunch of other packages. Many of which were decent. But usually they were free for Windows, and $$$ for the Mac.
I guess my point is that if you have access to a Windows box, or are willing to try Boot Camp, your options for photo and video management increase dramatically...
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From: Janne (Sep 27 2008, at 18:27)
crayz, the basic problem with video is that, unlike photography, postprocessing is not an optional extra but the bulk of the creative work. Shooting the video has always been the easy part, but that doesn't give you a video, but only some raw material from which you can make a video given enough time and perseverance.
A flawed analogy would be music, where shooting the footage is collecting a bunch of chords that should fit together. But a bunch of chords does not a musical piece make. Crafting them into a piece of music is where all the time, effort and talent goes.
Yes, we've had home video and photography forever. Seeing people's snapshots of friends and family can be very enjoyable when you know the people even when the photographs are not very good. But have you ever sat through a home video viewing that wasn't just desperately boring and cringworthily embarrassing? Video is harder to get right, and fails much worse than photography. Tim is doing the right thing by leaving his video camera behind.
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From: Avi Bryant (Sep 27 2008, at 18:50)
As someone with the expertise and tools to produce a halfway-decent few minutes of video, I can confirm that it takes many, many hours to do so. I also suspect that you're right that most people won't take the time to learn how. I don't blame the tools, though - anyone could learn the important subset of Final Cut Express needed for basic editing in, say, an hour spent with an expert (or even with me - Tim, I'm happy to show you the ropes). It's more that, unlike with still photography, you really have to have the entire process in mind from the start: at the least, you have to be thinking about editing the whole time you are shooting. You can fix a still's composition by cropping, and even sometimes rescue a bad exposure, but it takes a brilliant editor to pull anything good out of poor footage - not to mention that with a fixed aspect ratio and limited resolution, cropping is impossible and exposure control is tricky on video. Also, the conventions of documentary filmmaking (and someone shooting footage of their kids is, effectively, a documentarian) require more than just candid photography - as viewers we expect it to be tied together with interviews and well-written narration, which is a whole other batch of hard work.
So I think the 5DMkII is going to have two almost entirely separate audiences: first, pro and serious-amateur still photographers, who (like you) really don't care about the video aspects - and second, cost-conscious indie filmmakers and film students, who suddenly have access to completely unprecedented video quality at the price of a couple of hours of 16mm film+processing. Canon may not sell many units to the latter group, but I think the disruption to the industry there will be much greater.
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From: Peter Krantz (Sep 28 2008, at 01:18)
I find it interesting that people in the tech crowd seem to dislike the video capabilities of the 5D. Granted, most prosumers won't be doing full length documentaries with it but if it is a great camera for stills and the video capabilities are bundled, what's the problem?
I would love to be able to re-use lenses for shooting crappy home videos with this camera rather than a traditional video camera. And, it would be great for slit-scan photography.
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From: Patrick Mueller (Sep 28 2008, at 06:13)
Agree with the first few comments. We have a few hours of poof quality, crappily filmed, completely unedited, SOUNDLESS home movies from the 60's and 70's of our family that are priceless. Not everyone needs perfection. Ever been to this site called YouTube? :-)
I do completely agree with the general comments on the tools though. Everything about editing video is painful.
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From: Beerzie (Sep 28 2008, at 08:02)
Good post Everything: writing, music, photography, and yes, video is about editing, and video editing is a time-consuming and difficult task. The tools are kludge, bringing video on to the computer is slow, and video takes up a lot of space. (I have tried iMovie ad FCP, and they are too limited and too complex, respectivel.)
Another thing that makes video a challenge and makes video shot with a mediocre camera look amateur is bad sound. The new Canon has plugs for real mike input, which is a plus, while the new Nikon does not. And the ability to use REAL lenses is awesome.
All that being said, even though I have three kids, I shoot very little video myself. We rarely watch it, mainly because raw, unedited video is well, frankly, a bore. But there is nothing like watching video of a now 13 year old kid and hearing his voice and mannerisms when he was three. You are right, Tim, there is an opportunity out there for someone to develop a clever but easy-to-use tool set for video editing.
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From: AeroQ (Sep 28 2008, at 08:17)
Very simple tools like QuickTime Pro or SimpleMovieX are probably not enough to achieve a really personal result, but still can help is most cases to do derushing and export to a distribution or broadcast format.
Customers see a sweet point between those simple tools and Final Cut-kind-of-products, but developers fail to address the gap. iMovie could have become this product, but is drift away with the last version.
I think that something like SimpleMovieX with a module of effects (transitions, multi-track audio editing, captions) could make it.
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From: Christopher Keiser (Sep 28 2008, at 08:26)
Right on Tim,
If you want to shoot video that won't be sisyphian to edit, remember to edit in the camera as much as possible.
I explain clients that editing video is equal to 5 minutes for every minute shot.
Never the less, this summer I had a client at the Tour de France, who after a day of shooting, asked if the "videos" we shot all during the day, would be posted on their website before dinner that night (this was around 7pm.)
BTW, I tell all my friends who state that they want me to help them learn to use Final Cut, I tell them in the interest of our friendship to stick with iMovie.
-Christopher
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From: Marcos (Sep 28 2008, at 08:45)
Are you speaking of the "new" iMovie or the old iMovie 6? I think the prior version of iMovie (which one can still acquire online even if your Mac came with iMovie '08) is not a bad tool at all - though it's not in league with FCP.
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From: noribori (Sep 28 2008, at 08:57)
Everybody is thrilled by the 5D Mark II's picture quality. But audio quality is more important.
Nobody would watch YouTube videos if the audio quality would be just so lousy as the YouTube picture quality.
It's audio quality that makes everything expensive and complicated, from recording to editing.
Editing the pictures is easy, just add one scene after the other - you can do that even inside Quicktime Player (with Quicktime Pro). But while the pictures jump from scene to scene, audio is supposed to run without disturbing breaks. Sometimes you want the audio to go on while there are many cuts in the picture. Sometimes you want to add music or voice-over. That's why you need a good editing software.
Even the makers of "Reverie" cheated. There's no dialogue, no original sound, just a music track. That's how complete beginners are making movies.
On the other hand, I always thought that editing movies is much more fun than recording the material. It's the creative part.
In my opinion Apple's iMovie 7 was a step forward in encouraging people to edit their movies, but it was a step backwards in encouraging them to be creative.
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From: Chris (Sep 28 2008, at 09:00)
This is a marketing gimmick, no more no less. No one is really going to try to make anything more than a few short home movies with this. It would be like trying to make a wedding cake in an EZ Bake Oven. I agree with those above who mentioned the audio aspect. Can you plug an XLR mic into it without an adapter? What about timecode? Does it have 3 CCDs?
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From: Daniel (Sep 28 2008, at 10:24)
I must admit that I was pretty blown away by "Reverie". While I'm no photographer nor videographer, I truly respect those would really know their stuff in those areas. Especially since I - despite not creating much raw footage in still or video - do a fair amount of post-processing. I have access to all the tools, be it Photoshop/Lightroom/Aperture or Final Cut Pro, and I know both quite well (again, not a professional expert by any means, but I'm adept at both).
And I completely agree: There's a very real barrier to video editing. The odd thing is that nowadays editing digital stills is very far removed from the old darkrooms, and weird potions you'd dip negatives into. Video editing, however, is still closer to its roots. The software metaphors are somehow less abstract than those used for stills.
The biggest boon has been non-linear and non-destructive editing, but linearity was to begin with only and issue in video, and non-destructive editing of stills was less of an issue, as it has always been easy to make a copy of a still, and keep the original intact.
So apart from those workflow changes, there seems (to me at least, and I might wrong) to have been fewer changes in video editing than in still editing, as both went digital. iMovie '08 seems the biggest departure from traditional video editing software, but not necessarily for the better.
Of course, advances in still editing find their way into video, but - literally - frame-by-frame only. When a still photographer shoots 30 pictures over 5-10 minutes to find the perfect shot, the videographer has shot 30 pictures in one second. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the subject.
One thing, however, which I don't see mentioned is Laforet's note about the Reverie footage NOT having been post-processed besides compression/scaling (and some titles obviously). If true, and the Final Cut setup seen in the behind-the-scenes video was only used for cutting, then the Mark II is even more awesome.
But to make it so pretty only in-camera requires a team like Laforet's to set up, light and otherwise create it. But if one person can shoot not-quite-as-beautiful scenes, and then take the time to make the rest happen in video-software - however daunting it is - then, yes, cameras like the Mark II are game-changers.
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From: Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen (Sep 28 2008, at 10:36)
I don't have any experience with making video, but Janne's comparison to music sounds valid to me.
Learning how to play something can be a two-step process as well. First, you learn the nodes or chords. Then, you learn all the things not on the sheet that makes it worth listening to; you add feeling and style, for instance by varying tempo or intensity. If music only consisted of its raw fundamentals, there would be no need for producers, sound technicians, professionals and even recording in general. That need exists; no-one listens to MIDI files generated from sheets.
Besides, neither iPhoto nor Picassa can turn twits like me into great photographers.
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From: David Sifry (Sep 28 2008, at 10:45)
I tend to agree with Patrick Mueller on this, Tim. The biggest problem I have with my video is that I'm not carrying a video camera with me when something notable happens. Until now, I'd have to carry my SLR with me for still shots and either bring along a point-and-shoot which captured mediocre 640x480 video, or I'd have to carry a full-fledged video recorder alongside my SLR kit. This starts to get pretty obsessive, and in the moments that I'm swapping cameras, I'd likely lose a serendipitous shot.
I'd resigned myself that there'd never be a really good piece of equipment that would solve both video and still issues with few compromises until I saw the EOS 5D Mk II. Of course I don't expect that I'll be making video like the ones shown in the demos - that takes a lot of time, energy, lighting, money, and cinematography and editing skills. However, I could totally see myself taking family videos, or using my still camera on a tripod along with an attached lavalier mike or two to do podcast interviews on the fly as well.
Lately as I travel, I've been focusing on how I can reduce my kit so that I only have to carry a single carry-on for computer and camera gear, and still have a useful kit when I get to my destination. With the EOS 5D Mk II, I'm looking forward to removing one more piece of kit - the Point-and-shoot I used for walk-arounds and for video - and possibly adding a new lens to what I bring instead.
The low-light performance and auto-white balance also means that I can use large aperture lenses, ambient light, and small lamps that are available on-scene to shoot video, and hopefully get a reasonable interview out of it.
Even if I don't end up using it much for video, the increase in low-light ISO sensitivity, the additional resolution (we'll see how much that really means, as you and I both know about the myth of megapixels) and the extra 1fps are all valuable in and of themselves, IMHO.
Dave
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From: JulesLt (Sep 28 2008, at 11:27)
Personally, I think iMovie is fine for the simple movie editing people are talking about (i.e. family movies of the sort people use to record on Super 8) - as everyone noted, the charm is really in later nostalgia, not the artistry.
But that sort of material is going to be captured on a Flip camera, or a phone - your actual proper 'amateur' market. I've used iLife to tidy up people's wedding footage and burn it onto DVD and they thought it was absolutely brilliant, because all they wanted to do was cut a few bits out.
The issue is, perhaps, that anyone buying a mid-range DSLR has a greater interest in the technical quality of their results, and a higher expectation about what they should be able to easily achieve.
As one of the other comments noted, perhaps the real disruption will occur in the existing semi-professional video world, one already au-fait with more complex software.
I've heard that some news sites are asking for more video footage too, but expecting it to be captured by journalists / photo-journalists rather than a classic broadcast camera crew, and you can really see the appeal of just having a single device (particularly in halving lens investment).
Does anyone know, offhand, the price of the cheapest HD Camcorder with switchable lens?
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From: Austin Wallender (Sep 28 2008, at 11:38)
The problem with iMovie is that it doesn't embrace 3-point editing - a necessary concept for any serious work. Once you have that concept down, learn a few keys and FCP is pretty easy - Viewer , TImeline, I,O, F9, F10, and if you want to get crazy, B, S, R. And colorista replicates a lot of great funcitonality in lightroom or aperture in an easy UI.
The real problem is there's much more work to be done both in shooting and in posting video. Lighting, sound, logging, shooting multiple takes, color correction - all take much more time and effort, and have much less room for error - an errant sound or look can ruin an otherwise flawless take. Not to mention shaky-cam or trigger happy zooming that plague most amatuer videos.
And all the same problems carry over to the viewer as well. I can scan 50 mediocre photos from a friend pretty quickly, and find the gems. Even if the videos were only 30 seconds long, I doubt I'd have the patience to get through 2 or 3, so the overall impact is less.
So, overall, video is harder to shoot, harder to edit, and harder to view. The tools are fine - it's just that the medium is difficult.
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From: Steve (Sep 28 2008, at 11:56)
Ridiculous. No medium is off limits to the average person. Give it time. Groundbreaking products like the 5DMkII will inspire toolmakers and users, and they will deliver. Just watch the epic achievements to come.
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From: Tim O'Brien (Sep 28 2008, at 12:01)
I resonate with the angst here: http://blog.discursive.com/2008/09/getting-started-with-video-re-video-i.html
But, I do think FCE is less complex than you say. The time suck for video production is unbelievable. I'll shoot three hours of video and then sit on it for weeks because I can't carve out enough time for the 24 hours of post-processing it requires.
We need much faster hard drives before video is realistic for the consumer (and that's just on a technical level). I didn't begin to address the challenges of capturing content.
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From: MikeH (Sep 28 2008, at 12:36)
Tim,
I've taken to snapping together little movies from clips I take with my Nokia N95. The quality is low but acceptable, and the medium means you never take more than a minute or two of footage at most at a time.
I find that I can put my little movies together in a short space of time using iMovie. And the low quality is an aid rather than a hinderance, because you don't feel justified in investing huge amounts of time on something of supposed low quality.
Yet the results are more pleasing than movies from my camcorder that I've slaved over for hours.
I suppose the point is that the high quality video imposes a level of post processing that isn't justified for most users. Don't let the megapixels dictate your workflow.
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From: Philip Robert (Sep 28 2008, at 14:04)
Blaming your tools is a total copout. Producing a high quality video does take a lot of work, a lot of skill, and a lot of effort. Consistently producing a high quality photograph also requires a lot of work, skill and effort. The difference here is that we're talking about two different sets of skills. The population of people who are familiar with and competent at using a still camera and photoshop, iphoto, aperture, pikasa... is considerably larger than the population that is familiar with shooting and lighting for video, editing using Final cut, Avid, Premier, Pinnacle, or imovie.
I enjoy shooting still photos and video, and have typically recommended using a still camera for photos and a video camera for video. Lately I am finding that the video function of even a small point and shoot digital camera can be a useful video tool.
If your intention is to capture stills and video of little Johnny or Susie at their first softball game these new SLR's will be excellent just the way they are. If your intention is to create a professional video for yourself or a paying client then you're going to have to put in the time and effort to master the tools of the trade.
I'm extremely excited about potential of these new SLR's from Canon and Nikon in a video setting.
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From: Rolf Howarth (Sep 28 2008, at 14:59)
I suspect the reason is simply that creating an interesting video is much more complex than shooting a good still image. There are many extra dimensions and skills involved. With still photography, you need the eye to frame a shot to tell an interesting story, plus technical skills to make sure the lighting and exposure etc. are ok. In many cases you can't do much about the lighting, and the camera will make a pretty good stab at sorting out the exposure by itself, so it's really just about finding a good subject and capturing the right moment.
With video on the other hand, there's a whole new dimension: time. But much more than that. There's timing and pace. Don't linger so long on a subject that viewers get bored, don't flit around so quickly they get disoriented and irritated. There's giving the piece some structure, a beginning, a middle and an end if you like. Then there's the audio, which is hugely important too. Perhaps some music that's complementary to the subject, or dialog that fills in the background as to what's going on. The difference between still and video photography is the difference between having a neat story idea and catchy title... and writing a well-paced and gripping novel.
I don't think the problem is lack of software tools so much as most people not having the time and patience and skill to create a truly captivating piece of video. Collectively we're all far too impatient and used to instant gratification but some things do just take a bit longer to get right.
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From: Dave (Sep 28 2008, at 21:53)
I don't think Final Cut (Pro or Express) is any more difficult to learn than iMovie. I actually find iMovie more difficult and less intuitive with its simplified controls. The trick to learning Final Cut is to focus on the basic, and ignore the hundreds of other features you'll probably never use. Just learn the core skills.
As for naysayers on these next-generation dSLRs, saying things like this:
"This is a marketing gimmick, no more no less. No one is really going to try to make anything more than a few short home movies with this. It would be like trying to make a wedding cake in an EZ Bake Oven. I agree with those above who mentioned the audio aspect. Can you plug an XLR mic into it without an adapter? What about timecode? Does it have 3 CCDs?"
I think they are just missing the point. By a long way. These aren't even relevant questions.
Can you plug an XLR mic into the Canon 5D II? Well, not directly, but it is easy enough to get a "balun box" that converts the mini-jack audio input into an XLR input. Even then, it's not necessary. You could just record audio on a separate audio recorder, like the Zoom H4, and shoot a slate (clapperboard) for sync. That been standard practice in filmmaking for decades. So it means you could even use the D90, which has no external microphone input.
Does it have 3 CCDs? No, it has a siungle CMOS sensor. Why does it matter? Do you think that 3 CCDs is better than a single CMOS? Why? I'm betting you're saying that just because it's what you're used to. There's no reason this CMOS sensor wouldn't outperform a 3CCD camera. The industry is moving away from CCD-based designs, anyway.
As for being like using an "EZ Bake oven" instead of a serious tool, that's just ridiculous. In many aspects, these cameras are far superior to even the most high-end video cameras. In some areas they are lacking, but that does not make them toy cameras.
Somebody who is truly professional knows how to deal with the limitations of equipment, and use the right tool for the job. There are plenty of subjects that these dSLRs won't be well suited to - such as shooting live sports video, for example. But for the niche of short film-making on a budget, they are truly excellent. Almost none of the drawbacks affect typical short independent films - and the biggest advantage - the wide range of lenses, and the low cost are massive advantages that tip the scale towards the dSLR over the traditional video camera.
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From: Iain Anderson (Sep 28 2008, at 23:14)
Video is hard. Unplanned, unsteady videos are doomed to failure, while even a happy snapper can get lucky sometimes. There's just more to it, and any small part done poorly will ruin the end product.
To make editing a little easier (and perfectly doable in iMovie) I started a video podcast called "Twelve Fives". Cut your video into 5-second chunks. Put twelve of them together. Add music. A one-minute video postcard that's watchable and simple to make. Make your own and I'll link them in the stream at http://twelvefives.com . (There are about ten movies there right now. A 14-month old is taking away any time to produce more right now.)
iMovie (both recent versions) can be used to produce good work, but it falls down as soon as you want to do something "fancy" like a cutaway. Final Cut Express is probably very good for many people if they're not scared off by the interface -- most of the capabilities of Final Cut Pro for a couple of hundred dollars. As a Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Server trainer, I admit my perspective on this is a little biased. :)
(Don't know iMovie 06? Connect camcorder. Press Import. Find clip you want. Press command-T at start and end of good bits. Drag good bits to timeline. Share.)
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From: Panagiotis Astithas (Sep 29 2008, at 05:33)
Although good video editing tools exist (iMovie '06 is one of the main reasons I got a Mac), they are nowhere near the sophistication of the photo editing ones. As others have mentioned, the time dimension vastly changes the game. The equivalent of "red-eye reduction" and "sharpen" effects, might be something like a "Scorsese-like fast-paced clip succession" or a "Tarkovsky-like slow-paced one". If we had preset effects that combine video clips in configurable pace, perhaps with predefined music scores, we could put them in good use without much fuss. I think the menu editing presets in iDVD can be a good indicator of what can be achieved.
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From: Paul Morriss (Sep 29 2008, at 06:17)
Some very useful comments on this thread. And it looks like the problem is insoluble. I console myself with the thought that I will be able to edit the video when either a) if I'm confined to bed with something immobilising but which doesn't prevent me thinking or b) when I retire.
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From: brian (Sep 29 2008, at 07:57)
I think the 5 minutes of editing per 1 minute shot is pretty realistic, another way to look at it ( and how i bill for editing in LA ) is about an hour per minute of final video. and that is with pre-screened material (i.e. someone else sat through the raw tapes and picked out the actual useable bits). it is incredibly time-consuming. which is why all my industrial work gear sits in the closet during any sort of family function. i can't actually *enjoy* time with my family and still produce video that i feel is worth watching. my wife disagrees occasionally and puts the big camera on my dad and calls him kubrick for kicks, but i never edit that material. frankly i'm not sure software can fix this, the complexity is exponential from still photography.
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From: cybert (Sep 29 2008, at 14:36)
A lot of post process can be eliminated with good preproduction. Sure, if you don't have an idea or plan you can go shoot a bunch of video and spend tons of time trying to make that Raw footage into something worthwhile. On the other hand you can save a lot of time and money by pre planning a lot of what you want to do by way of shot list, location organization and maybe even some storyboarding. This cuts down post processing (minus FX)considerably. I think the people smart enough to use these tools are smart enough to be organized before they just start shooting. I'm hoping that this affordable tool (comparable to current high end video equipment) will get into the hands of people that can share their independent brilliance with the rest of the world. I know that i love seeing what the independent world of animation has to offer and i've know some of those independent studios had some "not so perfect tools". Talent can't be taught but Technique can and sometimes, rarely, it's hard to tell the difference.
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From: Nick (Sep 29 2008, at 21:29)
Making great video is not just making good photos at 30 frames per second. A picture need only be pretty for it to be considered good, but good video means good storytelling, and no tool can do that for you. It isn't a gadget problem or a tool problem, it's a people problem. People in front of the camera, people behind the camera, and people in front of the computer, cutting out the boring parts. That's really all you need in software: something to help you cut out the boring parts.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first comment. The people that embrace the razorblade and tape will make great stuff and be happy for it. I don't know what will possibly satisfy the rest of you.
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From: James Stephens (Oct 10 2008, at 23:29)
I'm a national newspaper photographer of 18 years. Mark my words -video cameras will replace stills cameras, still images will one day be taken from video. Anyone with a little intelligence can produced a nicely polished movie with the available consumer software. Get with it or get left behind!
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