A floor wax & a dessert topping.

Video and Still Cameras Converge Michael Reichmann has written just last week a timely and amazingly consise yet complete essay :

"Understanding Video:
A Video Primer for Photographers" at The Luminous Landscape.

"The world of image recording seems to consist of two isolated realities – video and still photography. Though they are similar in many ways they are worlds apart in others. But these seemingly irreconcilable worlds are converging, and I have already written on these pages about this convergence. Nikon's announcement of the D90 in late August – the world's first DSLR with video capability – just confirms that the worlds of still photography and video are on an inevitable collision course – at least insofar as equipment goes."

Comments

[Michael Comerford]

Fast forward 20 years - I want to go take 200 megapixel shots with my Nikon IMAX P&S camera. . .

I have no real problem with convergent technology, and the D90 certainly looks interesting, the Nikon announcement fairly followed up closely with a similar option coming from Canon, but I wonder at the target market. Are we just trying to get the P&S shooters into a market that will have them buying more expensive lenses and allowing them FAR greater flexibility than a standard video camera currently provides, or can we take this further.

Imagine the photo journalist, or news photog, who is out and about with a stills camera and can flick over to video mode and capture another event that wasn't foreseen.

What about investigators and law enforcement. Forensics teams that can video as well as photograph a scene with one camera, one type of battery charger in the truck, one type of film stock etc. etc.

I was only half joking with the IMAX comment - we already see films shot almost entirely on consumer/prosumer level videos (Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield) so the days are coming of some stunning videography taken by someone who has gotten themselves to a location that you would never think of taking a film crew, due to cost if nothing else.

The National Geographic Society must be itching for the technology to get here.