Supplying frame grabs instead of photos

[Noa Put]

So the depth of field becomes an issue

Before the dslr revolution, yes, but most video's I see online these days' have shallow dof, blurring the background in almost every shot just to get that look everyone calls "cinematic", so from that point of view it would be easy to extract stills. Since dslr's came into play most videographers film in a way photogs would capture images, if they have the time and freedom to get creative shots.

By the way I also advocate bringing in a dedicated audio professional too.

For weddings? Maybe the big guys charging 10k + can or will do that but for all other mortals that is never in the clients budget, here at least they won't even pay for a second videographer meaning I"m a full production unit on my own each time I do a wedding. :)

[Henry Kenyon]

I don't want to get off the point of the OP, but the wedding venue is going through a big change.
The photogs are threatened big time between the economy and the technology. Even our favorite family member or buddy can get a DSLR from Walmart and take free photos and sometimes they are passable. So the photog is now cutting into the video market which hurts the videographer because of the "free bonus" video. And the videographer is cutting into the photog's market with the "bonus" stills.

Funny thing though, is that because of the ability to get better control of video with good glass, f stops and the like, the demands on the videographer have been kicked up a notch or two. Uncle Joe with a DSLR from Walmart will be watching to see if we know about dof.

And then we find out that the new Panny AC90 doesn't have auto level on the external mic ins which means riding the audio controls at the same time.
The average DSLR user is getting into audio problems we solved twenty years ago. (To think with all the stuff out there we are going back to the "slate" methods used in film).

With everyone competing why not collaborate with the DJ, the photog, a "utility man" and video. I've experimented (once) and the results were far better than the individuals get trying to protect their turf. All can get paid their due, but the choreography, game plans etc make for a better product at the end.

Including the DJ (who could do audio at the ceremony), and providing a preferred audio feed at the reception. The same wireless kit and mixer can work for the ceremony and the reception.

A well trained second camera man can switch between video and stills to cover all points. When B roll is locked off, or not used, the second operator can grab stills.

From a business view point, a well oiled machine could be quite formidable against the individuals trying to make any money they can, as well as Uncle Joe the amateur.
Then the client may not feel they have to choose between stills and video.

No debate intended if it seems that way, I am a sound man, videographer and photographer with my own complete sound system as well, and have been milling this same question too.
It's more competitive than ever, not only because of the merger of pro equipment, but because now even the inexperienced are getting into the act. The OP's question comes up more than likely partly due to the challenge to stay competitive.

In a crew concept, the answer can be "yes" especially if it supplements the main still camera.

[Noa Put]

The photogs are threatened big time between the economy and the technology.

In my country photogs are doing very well, they are full booked every year and I don't see that changing the next years, at the last wedding I did the photog arrived in a 5 series beamer and most of them drive big expensive cars and use expensive gear. Professional photogs are still no1 on the list of almost every bride, I also think most brides won't take the risk of getting framegrabs from a video camera because they value their photo's so much, they rather would choose a dedicated photog who will do it right and pay a premium price for it. If you want to sell that as a videographer to a client you need to have a good portfolio showing you can do both well and even then you would have to cut back on price compared to what a photog can charge. I wonder if there are videographers today offering framegrabs and have a online portfolio to showcase their work?

[Nicholas de Kock]

Noa I agree with you that frame grabs won't replace photographers, a photographer is not only a person pressing a button but is an artist doing more than capturing a scene, their photos is a reflection of their art & personalities. The thing that I'm excited about is we now have a new tool that will give us more room to play. 4K is only 8MP and by no means the at the quality of a properly lit professional photo but it will give us the opportunity to grab a frame & get a half decent print.

[Nigel Barker]

The advantage of 4K is that there is more scope for cropping. If it's just a photograph that you want then 1920x1080 is ample. Here is another frame grab from the C300. This image hasn't even been manipulated in Lightroom or Photoshop just straight off the timeline & converted to JPG. I am looking at this image zoomed in on a 30" monitor & the resolution & quality is plenty good enough for a wedding album or even a 20"x16" wall print.

[Dave Partington]

We've taken stills from video and used them in albums along side the regular stills and no one has even noticed. It's about how you use them. If you're trying to get a large double page spread then you run out of resolution pretty quickly. It's not the same as making a canvas for a wall that's designed to be viewed from a distance. Albums need high-res for close viewing.

OTOH, if all the couple want at 6"x4" prints then it's a no brainer provides you have a clear shot without motion blur.

We did Photo & Video packages for a while and we stopped doing them because they were hard work.

But, having video only, and hoping to get good photos from it is not likely to produce the desired results, especially if the couple were expecting large group shots in an album. When people realise they can get stills from a video, and suddenly think they can fire the photographer and save money I quickly step in to clarify things for them. No photographer generally means no group shots for instance.... and they have to figure out exactly what it is they really want.

Some weddings we've easily found a couple of hundred stills from the video, while others we've been struggling to find 20. Even though the video looks awesome, finding the desired frames without motion blur can sometimes be a problem.

[Art Varga]

I'm a videographer and for the past couple of years have included a frame-grab slideshow with my wedding packages. The idea naturally came about from what you discover during the editing process - that embeded in all the video footage are amazing photographic moments. Specifically, the concept of "micro-expressions" covered in the 1DC clip. Isolating the sequence of a kiss for example down to the one frame that stands out over all the others. Today, I use a 5Dm2 and the images are pretty good but I can see where a camera like the 1DC can take this to another level or perhaps be a game changer.

Art

[Adrian Tan]

Rob Adams said something in his course like, "The next time I upgrade my cameras, I'm upgrading everything to 4K". -- Well, I could definitely see some $10,000 wedding people moving to 1DCs over the next two years (maybe not Rob). At least to rent, if not to purchase. Abraham Joffe, featured in the 1DC microexpressions video, well might. Advantages include: ability to reframe; better-looking image when downsampled from 4K to 1080 (presumably); crazy low-light; better dynamic range with Canon Log codec.

(Disadvantages include: 1 minute = 4GB. But maybe having a stack of 128GB cards, and hard drives for backup, is not a problem in the scheme of things. I think there's dual CF slots, so that's still over an hour of shooting time before you have to change.)

This said, I don't think frame grabs will replace photographers at the high end. I've just spoken to a bride who spent $8,000 on a photographer, which is pretty much as much as you're going to pay in Australia. I asked her what percentage of the whole this was, bearing in mind that normal photo+video expenses at weddings in Australia = 10% of budget. Well, given that she was spending $200,000 on the wedding, that $8K was just 4%, and she didn't hire a videographer.

So, at the high end, I think it's a no-brainer for a bride to hire a photographer separately, instead of purchasing frame grab packages; the results are much better, and the spend on a photographer is a smaller percentage of the overall budget.

At the low- or medium-level -- I think plenty of brides might be happy with an album of frame grabs pulled from a 1DC. The problem is -- at such a level, the videographer is not going to own one.

[Dave Partington]

The 1Dc looks like an awesome camera. The good (or bad) news is that this is the start, not the end of the process. 4K cameras will come down in price pretty quickly over the coming years. The question is who will adapt the quickest and best? The Photographer used to posing people or the videographer used to being more passive?

At £10K the 1Dc is too expensive for the average wedding videographer and too low a MP count for the photographer who can actually afford it.

However, I do think that a merging of technologies is coming and we need to be ready.

I would 'love' a 1Dc. Do I think I could sell stills from it? Absolutely. Would I replace a high end photographer? No.

Photography and videography are different skill sets. I do both, but I prefer video. Why? I know the answer to that, but out of interest, does everyone else who does video over photo? There is a reason you picked one over the other. Why is that?

4K photos are perfectly acceptable, subject to correct exposure and lack of malleability that raw photos have in post. People used to shoot the Canon 1D (4MP) and produce awesome photos. But realise they were shooting at much faster shutter speeds to capture a freeze frame and avoid the motion blur that is (almost) a requirement of video.

You can't have it both ways - awesome video *and* awesome stills. For sure, you will get *some* great stills, but motion blur will surely catch you out more times than you think. Just step frame by frame through any video and find the one frame you'd really like. Now, is there motion blur or not?

Yes, we've taken video stills and placed them next to photo stills in an album, but could we do that for all the formals too? Hmmmm......

[Dave Blackhurst]

It might not be practical TODAY, but 4K is coming, and likely will be 60p... so motion blur won't be that big an issue.

Technology will continue to march forward, better to be thinking ahead than be sitting there in 5 years wondering "what happened"?

Are the disciplines of photography and video "different"? Yes... and no. The "physics" of iris, shutter, ISO, exposure and focus will continue to apply - and the "nut behind the camera" will continue to be an important part of the equation. Although "intelligent" technology will probably continue to get better at doing even the "creative" work, to some extent.

Is the capture equipment "different"? Increasingly, we're seeing cameras that are getting more and more proficient at "crossover" capabilities, it's a matter of "fast enough" processing (and storage) to handle the higher data rates required for the higher resolutions. That comes fast, maybe not overnight, but it won't be THAT long. An 8GB memory card that seemed "big" a couple years ago is now not so much... 32Gb now seems "comfortable"...



It'll be interesting to hear and see what CES has to offer - I suspect the manufacturers are going to be looking to move to 4K ASAP, as the "high end" TV's of today aren't selling for the prices or in the quantities "expected", 3D has probably been a disappointment, they need a "new" hook... something that might catch the consumer's fancy (and $).

Similar market predicaments face the "camera" and "videocamera" segments - they've been pretty well thrashed by "HD" cell phones and tablets with decently high res cameras... unless there's a HUGE step up in the technology, those markets will be fading away... for better or worse, the cell/tablet is what I'm seeing used as "the camera" by MOST consumers. That leaves the "enthusiast" and the "professional" segments, those aren't nearly as large a market, and it takes quantity sales to drive the R&D payback - so again, "4K" probably should show up in CONSUMER products sooner rather than later, if not this year, by next year almost certainly. It'll be "expensive" at first, but so was HDV...and AVCHD...

[Adrian Tan]

Quick note -- in Philip Bloom's recent review of the 1DC, he notes that Abraham Joffe, last year, shot a wedding on this camera and supplied a photo album for the couple made up of frame grabs. So there you have it -- people are already doing this.

I couldn't justify the cost of purchasing a 1DC, let alone four 1DCs so that all the cameras match (the media alone could cost more than a C100), but I think if you offered an album of frame grabs as an upgrade to your packages, and built the hire cost into the pricing, then it might be practical to use them for weddings...

[Dave Blackhurst]

Always remember that what is exorbitantly pricey today will become "consumer grade" and standard over time.

While it's probably a little early (and WAY too expensive) to consider this approach, it never hurts to be aware of what will no doubt be "coming soon". It's likely "doable" even with today's tech, with a few compromises in quality that most people will NEVER notice...

[Arthur Gannis]

If the videographer manages to convince the couple that photos and artistic ones at that, will be made available along with the single video pricing, then I would see 2 serious flaws that potentially spells disaster even if the photo grabs from the video are technically just as good as the best a pro photographer can do. The main problem I see is that the videographer will have to do double duty and also “think“ like a photographer in artistic poses that would either look silly and static if video capture is done during that pose and even if not filming , it would take considerable more time and effort just to pose those “artistic“ shots with properly placed strobes, reflectors that a pro photog can do. Yes, it can be done if time is available for separate functions. Weddings are hectic and time is a luxury that few events will allow. The other consideration is editing all the grabs as well as cropping and color correcting them and perhaps printing. Not to mention having a few done in sepia, B&W, vignettes, etc. that a pro photographer has the time for. Not an easy task if more than 1000 frame grabs are done. Yet another consideration is putting a photographer, amateur or pro, out of commission. This thought perhaps is best suited for a videographer, or should I say, a cinematographer, that deals with a couple that mostly wants video as the prime coverage and photos as a small “grab what you can“ without regard for the exacting standards a pro photog can commit to.

[Nigel Barker]

Not all photographers go in for posing with off camera flash etc There is quite a fashion nowadays for so-called photojournalistic, reportage or documentary style photographic coverage using only natural light.

[Arthur Gannis]

Many photographers today, especially the ones who started doing weddings since the advent of the digital capture see the available light concept as quite a fashion and as a novel photojournalistic approach to the candid “ off the cuff “ style that was, in reality, never really invented but as the only viable method to capture any image when no other form of supplemental lighting was either not available or not needed. Documentary photography in weddings as well as existing available light capture does indeed make for beautiful photos as the master HC Bresson in “the decisive moment“ can tell you. Most of his images are well over half a century old. Applying that unobtrusive style in any social event is seen today as something novel and exciting. Even the so called “narrow depth of field“ look has been practiced ad infinitum since telephoto and high aperture lenses were introduced in the forties and fifties. I often used my Pentax Spotmatic full wide with that Takumar 50mm F1.4 when the slide film of choice was only Kodachrome ASA 25. Man did I get narrow DOF and candid, non obtrusive documentary work with that one. I shot available light weddings on 35mm film when 400 asa was the holy grail of available light. Many wedding photographers back in the 60's and 70's “ knew “ that a bridal portrait next to a window bathed in that natural light with that Carl Zeiss 80mm on the Hassy racked out to 2.8 along with a softar 2 can do. Eyes had to be absolutely in focus, the rest didn't matter. Many back then also used the Tessar 350mm F5.6 at 5.6 for fashion shoots or street photography just for the DOF. Today's generation of wedding photographers have way too many choices of cameras, lenses, asa's, accessories that if one looks back and just see the simplicity of equipment and what can be accomplished with the minimum gear used back then, one can only ask, how did they do that ? It's not magic, it's just keeping your eyes open and aware of previsualising what is about to happen soon. Like the great Wayne Gretzky said “ I don't skate where the puck is, I skate to where the puck will be“. I know Mr. Bresson had that talent. An assignment I gave myself on being asked to accompany a photographer for a wedding was just to use one prime lens throughout the entire day, one asa setting, no flash. I chose a 50mm F1.4 at asa 800 on a full frame.