video capture vs 60 fps

[Leonard-just-Leonard]

<p>So, today I finally tried to take a single frame capture from a video I shot from with my camera. Does that really count as a photograph, since I snagged it from a quicktime movie I took? I mean really, what's the difference between that and shooting at 60 frames per second?</p>

<p>It turned out OK... the thing is I tried for the past 3 days just to get a shot of the fish inside a pelican's pouch as they gulped them down... I used 7 fps burst mode and managed to get a couple shots, but they were not good enough. Annoyed I did the video thing today and eventually looked at it and realized I did get one shot of many fish in the pouch.</p>

<p>Some photo contests rules I have read in the past do NOT consider video capture frames to be "real" photographs... Does photo.net have any rules about this?</p><div></div>

[MichaelChang]

<p>It might matter in the case of a photo contest, but as a viewer, I'm sure one day the line will be so blurred that few people will care. </p>

<p>These are frame-grabs from a video of the Syrian war at the very moment a tank blast killed 3 fighters:<br>

<a href="http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/5718451/life-and-death-aleppo-photos">http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/5718451/life-and-death-aleppo-photos</a></p>

<p>I don't think photo.net has rules about this since it accepts image outputs from scanners of real objects as photos. </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>I know one thing if I'ld shot that same scene with my Pentax K100D DSLR as a single Raw still image I'ld have to do so much post processing to recover the blown highlights in the white feathers or else underexpose so much to where all the water was black. I've noticed this type of what seems very good on the fly auto exposure adjust and tone preservation from other video captures especially from GoPro 3 captures on YouTube but found out that there was quite a bit of post processing to make it look so good.</p>

<p>Did you have to do any similar post processing or is that a direct unedited pull from the Quicktime video?</p>

[Leonard-just-Leonard]

<p>I used some video editing program (not sure which one avi-something?) to save the single frame as a bmp file. Then I used ACDC to convert to a jpeg since photoshop would not read the file (wrong format)</p>

<p>Once in Photoshop all I did was bring the curves down a bit and crop it to fit a standard 4x6 print. I can't remember if I did autoadjust on contrast or not. The camera - Nikon Coolpix P600 shoots in HDMI so the quality was pretty good to start with.</p>

<p> </p>

[phule]

<p>Shooting 4K video allows you to pull out 8MP frames. At that point, I would argue, there is no longer a blurry line. For all but very large prints, the line is gone. </p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<blockquote>

<p>Some photo contests rules I have read in the past do NOT consider video capture frames to be "real" photographs..</p>

</blockquote>

<p>While I can get why they might create this rule, and while I personally feel there is a huge difference between video and photo, there is also a level of ignorance about it on a more fundamental level. <br /> As a photo contest: video sequences make it easier in a way to capture also the right moment - the aspect of timing that makes many great photos great, is a bit lost. But, as you say, shooting 60 frames per second (and some cameras do shoot 60 stills per second) is essentially the same thing. So, I get where the rule may come from, and I guess in the end, it is a very moot point.<br /> The ignorance about it is of course that every single frame in a video (be it film, be it digital) is a still image. Acting like they're two different things is ignoring the underlying structure of what a video is, and what a still image is. But well, many photo contests aren't very sensitive to such contemplations, and they just draw up some rules that should seperate the "photographer" from the rest - I guess. The rules are often just funny.</p>

<p>Personally, though, I find shooting a video a completely different activity - the attention one gives for catching that one moment, anxious-patiently waiting with the finger ready on the shutter - in video it's not there. I'm an extremely lousy videographer, because I miss this tension and I do not have a sense for creating a storyline in the video via movement, the different moments. As a mental activity, it doesn't resonate with me the way photography does. But I severly doubt that's the reason to artificially split video from photo :-)</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>There is a limit to human reflex which makes the capture of any high speed event more a matter of chance than skill through still photography.</p>

<p>Without the assistance of automation, we would not have photos of a compressed tennis ball as it hits the wall or water balloons bursting with the water still holding its contained shape.</p>

<p>Frame rate is just another aid to help us capture events occurring at a rate quicker than our ability to process and react to, so whether it's by video or other means becomes irrelevant as automation incrementally compensates for a shooter's cognitive limit.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>"Does photo.net have any rules about this?"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Nope. It would make as much sense to ban videos that were created from 30-60 fps maximum resolution still captures (which is how some of the earliest 4k videos were created using the Nikon V1 - it required piecing together many one-second segments).<br>

<br>

No need for any such rules. Unless we wish to impose rules that reduce still photography to a formalized discipline so that we may congratulate ourselves on obeying the rules so well. There's nothing wrong with such formal disciplines if that's what the creators and consumers enjoy, otherwise there would be no haiku. But folks who enjoy writing and reading haiku don't claim it is the one and only true and pure form of poetry, to the exclusion of all else.<br>

<br>

The line between still photography and video is almost gone. The rest is down to selecting frames. Powerful hardware, cheap storage and smarter editing tools to quickly narrow down the selection will make better sense for most action oriented photography - photojournalism, sports, wildlife.</p>

[Damon DAmato]

<p>Like comparing a bait, hook, rod and reel to a fishing with a net.<br />Or hunting with a machine gun. <br /><br />At least you won't be taken aback when someone says, "Great photo, you must have a good camera" because they would be right. It was all camera and no skill.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>"It was all camera and no skill."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That implies all types of photography are dependent on "skill", a nebulous term akin to "sharpness" that mostly translates to "voodoo" and "arcane knowledge reserved to the worshipful masters and forbidden to the profane".<br>

<br>

Good action oriented photography depends mostly on timing and being in the right place. All else being equal - access; the basics of exposure, composition, etc., the essentials of which can be learned in a day - still frame grabs from video merely enhance the tools available to the skilled photographer.<br>

<br>

The PJ and sports photographer who persists in touting his "skills" while limiting himself to still photography will have a hard time explaining why he missed the shot that the other guy doing video managed to snag. That frame grab from Tracey Shelton's video makes for an astonishingly powerful photograph. The photojournalism craft and the courage and tenacity of PJs who work in those conditions aren't diminished by her use of video.<br>

<br>

Same with an expensive wildlife photo tour. Why wouldn't I take advantage of 30-60 fps still framerates, or high resolution frame grabs, to snag that perfect moment? Unless I prefer to tell fish stories about the one that got away.</p>

[Damon DAmato]

<blockquote>

<p>Unless I prefer to tell fish stories about the one that got away.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No. I want to come home and tell everyone I dragged a net around the lake and got a couple of big ones. Maybe take a picture of me next to a net full of fish to show off. <br /> To each his own, I guess.<br /><br />Editing to add that maybe I'm thinking as an amateur, and if I was a professional, I might want that extra insurance. That said, I don't have all that many fish stories about the one that's a 1/4 second off. Most of mine are about not having a camera with me.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em>Same with an expensive wildlife photo tour. Why wouldn't I take advantage of 30-60 fps still framerates, or high resolution frame grabs, to snag that perfect moment?</em><br /> <br /> Well, if you shoot with a 5fps capable camera and get home with 300GB of stills from a safari, vs. a 60fps camera you might come home with far larger amount of data in video sequences that you must edit and find the right frames with perfect timing. That could take months to go through, and none of your images grabbed from video will compare with 36MP still captures when making a print large enough to pass as furniture. And if one values one's free time at $50/hour, it becomes very expensive to edit all that material (I count time spent editing tens of thousands of frames at a computer as a significant reduction from the part of my life that I would consider meaningful.).</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>I guess the bottom line is personal preference; whatever does the job and makes you happy, unless you're doing it for pay, in which case it's whatever the individual who is paying will consider acceptable. </p>

[Leonard-just-Leonard]

<p>Almost all my photography is nature/wildlife... the outdoors thing... once in a blue moon people such as family only if they ask on special occasions.</p>

<p>Anywho, about a month ago a black bear and three cubs were no more than 15 feet away from me at Cameron lake ( not by <em><strong>my</strong></em> choice ) They came out of the woods to feed at the boat launch and exhibit area. I never thought of shooting video at the time because I consider myself a photographer, if even I am just an amateur. I wanted to make sure I got the shots and high quality ones to boot.</p>

<p>Looking back now after running the video of the pelicans just for the h**l of it, would video have served me better with momma and the cubs?</p>

<p>I think video chews up way too much precious battery power and really takes the challenge out of the sport and the artisty out of the art. Hopefully the next time I see one of those "once in a lifetime" action scenarios I have the presence of mind to flip over to video and leave the philisophical debates about purity of art to landscapes and birds sitting in trees.</p>

[MichaelChang]

<blockquote>

<p><em>"I think video chews up way too much precious battery power and really takes the challenge out of the sport and the artisty out of the art."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>The artistry of filmmaking (using video as the medium) is in telling a compelling story regardless of length. It's a lot harder than it appears and relatively few do it well. It's an expert discipline on its own and curiously only photographers see it as an extension of still photography which it is not. <br>

<br>

A picture of a bear with three cubs on its own can only communicate a limited amount of information. A well crafted short film (video) will be able to communicate a complete story whose quality is limited only by the skill of the storyteller. <br>

</p>

[dan_south]

<p>I can think of three small differences.</p>

<p><em><strong>1. Shutter Speed</strong></em></p>

<p>In order for video to look smooth, it is typically shot at a shutter speed that records a bit of motion blur. If you shoot video at a faster shutter speed, the video can look jerky, for lack of a better word.</p>

<p>Using your still camera with a fast, repeating shutter speed, you could set the shutter speed to a very fast value, e.g. 1/2000th of a second. Motion in your frames would be more completely frozen. It wouldn't make a good movie, but if you need to freeze motion blur completely, this will work better than pulling stills from a video.</p>

<p><em><strong>2. Resolution</strong></em></p>

<p>Also, whether those stills at 2 megapixels in size (HD) or 8 megapixels (4k), the resolution of your still frames will be considerably higher (unless you're still shooting with an 8 MP camera). </p>

<p><em><strong>3. Raw Capture</strong></em></p>

<p>Some video cameras and video-enabled still cameras enable the capture of raw video. You can process this video just like a raw file for a still frame - i.e. adjusting contrast, exposure, white balance, and other parameters with complete control. Not all cameras have the capacity to capture raw video. But any DSLR will enable you to shoot stills in fast succession in raw mode until the buffer size runs out (usually quite quickly).</p>

 

[dan_south]

<blockquote>

<p>It was all camera and no skill.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Do you ever use autofocus for your photos, including modes that track moving subjects? Auto exposure modes? Auto white balance? Auto ISO? <br>

<br>

If so, then someone could make the "all camera and no skill argument about your photos, as well. I wouldn't necessarily agree or disagree with that assessment, but it's as valid a viewpoint as any.<br>

<br>

A frame of video needs to be properly composed, properly exposed, and properly focused. The scene must be studied in advance to predict where the action will happen and how best to light and capture it. It's not all done machine, in my view. <br>

<br>

The camera does assist in the process of image making. But that's true in the case of just about EVERY photograph. Try making a photograph without a camera sometime.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>"That could take months to go through..."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's why I usually emphasize smarter editing tools to make frame grabs from video more practical. The Smart Photo Selector in the Nikon 1 System is just a start. As with smarter AF tracking and other tools, it'll get better. Smarter video editing tools will help automate the frame grab process for editing on deadline.</p>

[pmind]

<blockquote>

<p>In order for video to look smooth, it is typically shot at a shutter speed that records a bit of motion blur. If you shoot video at a faster shutter speed, the video can look jerky, for lack of a better word.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The blur is also controlled by the shutter angle.</p>

[phule]

<p>[[No. I want to come home and tell everyone I dragged a net around the lake and got a couple of big ones. Maybe take a picture of me next to a net full of fish to show off. <br /> To each his own, I guess.]]</p>

<p>Which is why you still shoot only daguerreotypes, right? Because anything more than 1 frame per hour is an abomination? </p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>really takes the challenge out of the sport and the artisty out of the art. </p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Scribes said that about printing presses.</p>

[Damon DAmato]

<blockquote>

<p>Do you ever use autofocus for your photos, including modes that track moving subjects? Auto exposure modes? Auto white balance? Auto ISO? <br /> <br /> If so, then someone could make the "all camera and no skill argument about your photos, as well.</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />Skills like focus and exposure are easily learned. If you combine that with unlimited number of frames of everything, then google maps street view is the best photographer in the world.<br /> <br />The skill I'm talking about has to do with when and what is shot.<br /> <br />Since you asked---<br /> Autofocus -- Yes. And it took me quite a while to get used to it, but after moving to digital, I couldn't really focus using modern lenses. (Before that, I used an F2, split image finder, with a non-auto lenses that were very easy to focus. <br />Tracking focus stuff. Never. <br /> Auto exposure. Not always.<br /> Motor drive style shooting. One time. Hated it.<br /> Auto white. Yes. <br /> Auto iso. Never.</p>

<p>One way or the other, the moment the photo is taken-- you may have heard about that moment discussed here and there-- is always decided by me. <br /><br />After that list of auto-this and auto-that, I'm glad to have something that I actually have to do. Otherwise, I might as well stay home and photograph my Tivo, and call it photography.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Doesn't matter whether the final image was captured as a single trip of the shutter or culled through 60 frames a second from video, the final decision to choose which one is the best is what determines skill. What came before is left in the dust and doesn't deserve that much attention. At least the person purchasing such an image won't think, care or bother to know that much about it.</p>

<p>Art directors for the publishing industry and museum curators are paid quite well for this skill, so choose wisely, photogs.</p>

[Damon DAmato]

<p>Well good for you. I wish you well in your career as a camera attendant. <br />That's why I choose not to be paid to do the thing I love.</p>

[dan_south]

<blockquote>

<p>after moving to digital, I couldn't really focus using modern lenses.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Live View, Focus Peaking, and Instant Image Review don't work on your camera?</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>(Before that, I used an F2, split image finder, with a non-auto lenses that were very easy to focus. </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Try focusing with movements on ground glass with a loupe while holding your breath under a dark cloth so as not to fog up the glass. Not so easy to focus.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><br /><br />Auto exposure. Not always.<br>

Auto white. Yes. </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Why do you bother if exposure "is a skill that can be learned easily." Setting white balance is even easier. Are you simply a "camera attendant?"</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>One way or the other, the moment the photo is taken-- you may have heard about that moment discussed here and there-- is always decided by me. </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Do you instruct birds when to fly, athletes which way to run, and wedding couples which jokes should make them cringe when the Best Man gives his speech? Or can you admit that events outside of your direct control can have an impact on the outcome of a photo? And that you couldn't capture those moments at all without camera technology?</p>