Farewell, still photographers

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Something struck me tonight as I was taking a screenshot of my Mac. HDTV at 1080p is 1920 x 1080 pixels. That’s roughly two megapixels.

With 2 megapixels, you can print a reasonably nice 4 x 6 photo at 300 DPI.

Think about that for a second.

HDTV. 4 x 6 photo.

What does this mean? It means that the age of the still photographer may be coming to an end, at least in the way that we know it, where you try to click the shutter at just the right moment, in just the right light, to capture just the right photo.

As technology improves, as video goes from 1080p to higher and higher resolutions, at some point you won’t ever need to worry about clicking the shutter to capture a great photo. You’ll simply open the video stream, find the exact moment in the video that you want to print as a still photo, export that frame, and call it a day. Imagine what that will mean for portrait studios – just tell someone to come in for a minute, make a bunch of faces, have fun, don’t worry about posing, and then after 60 seconds of video or so, go to the studio display, scroll through the video stream, and get the photo you want.

Where will we be in 10 years? I remember the maximum resolution a consumer could get for reasonably money 10 years ago was 640 x 480 in the Sony Mavica and the Apple Quicktake. Today, you can get a 12 megapixel camera for about the same amount of money – 40 times the resolution. If we’re today at 2 megapixel VIDEO stills, and technology manages the same rate of improvement, we’ll be able to print mural-sized photos from our videos in the next decade.

Comments

8 responses to “Farewell, still photographers”

July 5, 2007

Bryce Moore

That’s assuming, of course, that the storage systems can keep pace.

Assume 10 years down the line we’re talking about at least 20-MP still/video cameras (at which point we’ll be well beyond the quality-level of the best 35mm camera film today). A 20-MP camera would generate an uncompressed full-size still image of roughly 60 MB in size.

It’s safe to assume by then we’ll have standardized HD video transmissions across the board at 60fps or higher (since some HD video parameters already are).

If my math is right, that creates an uncompressed video file at the rate of 3.6 GB per second (60 MB per frame times 60 frames per second), or a terabyte in less than 5 minutes. Even assuming a lossless codec compresses things 50%, that’s still a large chunk of disk. While the consumer market would definitely get JPEG-like compression, professionals are not going to work on anything that isn’t uncompressed or lossless.

Perpendicular disk technologies will help reduce that impact, but we will need another leap in storage technology to keep pace. Current disk capacities are already straining against the requirements of HDTV. They’re also going to have to be a lot faster to write data at 20-MP video rates.

I won’t say it’s impossible, of course. The first hard drives were 5 MB, weighed more than a car, and were hauled out of cargo planes with forklifts. Now I can carry 4 GB of no moving parts on a keychain.

Reply
July 5, 2007

Doug Dobbins

You should get a copy of the May/June HD VideoPro magazine. David Lesson of The Dallas Morning News does what you just posted about.

Reply
July 5, 2007

Bryce Moore

That’s assuming, of course, that the storage systems can keep pace.

Assume 10 years down the line we’re talking about at least 20-MP still/video cameras (at which point we’ll be well beyond the quality-level of the best 35mm camera film today). A 20-MP camera would generate an uncompressed full-size still image of roughly 60 MB in size.

It’s safe to assume by then we’ll have standardized HD video transmissions across the board at 60fps or higher (since some HD video parameters already are).

If my math is right, that creates an uncompressed video file at the rate of 3.6 GB per second (60 MB per frame times 60 frames per second), or a terabyte in less than 5 minutes. Even assuming a lossless codec compresses things 50%, that’s still a large chunk of disk. While the consumer market would definitely get JPEG-like compression, professionals are not going to work on anything that isn’t uncompressed or lossless.

Perpendicular disk technologies will help reduce that impact, but we will need another leap in storage technology to keep pace. Current disk capacities are already straining against the requirements of HDTV. They’re also going to have to be a lot faster to write data at 20-MP video rates.

I won’t say it’s impossible, of course. The first hard drives were 5 MB, weighed more than a car, and were hauled out of cargo planes with forklifts. Now I can carry 4 GB of no moving parts on a keychain.

Reply
July 5, 2007

Doug Dobbins

You should get a copy of the May/June HD VideoPro magazine. David Lesson of The Dallas Morning News does what you just posted about.

Reply
July 5, 2007

julien

what bryce said. damn, i have to read my rss more often.

Reply
July 5, 2007

julien

what bryce said. damn, i have to read my rss more often.

Reply
July 5, 2007

Rob Suarez

Chris,

Yes.
And No.

Still photography (as opposed to motion video) is still a little trickier than just dealing with pixels and resolution.

Frame rate – or shutter speed – is still the greatest obstacle. So, yes, you could theoretically film someone in HD for a while and then print out a frame… you’d be hard pressed, however, to find a frame that wasn’t blurry. Video relies heavilly on Persistence of Vision. Still photography relies heavilly on light entering the lens – both are competing for shutter speed/frame rate/ aperture.

When i was crash testing seats for airplanes, we used a 10,000 FPS video camera. We were able to get any frame we wanted in crystal clarity. Needless to say, that technology doesn’t hit the mainstream market.

Anyway, I tend to believe that artists will use whatever tool they feel best conveys the results they want. So, while the casual photographer may be fine pulling double duty from a video camera… the serious photographer would probably choose his tools differntly.

Just my 2 cents!

Reply
July 5, 2007

Rob Suarez

Chris,

Yes.
And No.

Still photography (as opposed to motion video) is still a little trickier than just dealing with pixels and resolution.

Frame rate – or shutter speed – is still the greatest obstacle. So, yes, you could theoretically film someone in HD for a while and then print out a frame… you’d be hard pressed, however, to find a frame that wasn’t blurry. Video relies heavilly on Persistence of Vision. Still photography relies heavilly on light entering the lens – both are competing for shutter speed/frame rate/ aperture.

When i was crash testing seats for airplanes, we used a 10,000 FPS video camera. We were able to get any frame we wanted in crystal clarity. Needless to say, that technology doesn’t hit the mainstream market.

Anyway, I tend to believe that artists will use whatever tool they feel best conveys the results they want. So, while the casual photographer may be fine pulling double duty from a video camera… the serious photographer would probably choose his tools differntly.

Just my 2 cents!

Reply