There’s a lot of stuff going on right now with folks seeming to scramble over a move to video from still cameras. I think I’ll go the other way.
With video cameras from film to Hi8 having been around for more than a year or two, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I saw a link from a friend not too long ago about a stop motion type movie that a photographer had put together combining images from a DSLR. My $5 video camera from 1989 could do that; “so what” was basically my response.
I wonder when or if, after saturation with all things ephemeral and power dependent, there will be a shift back to things that are more permanent – paper and film. I once got a negative in the mail, a 4×5, that was from a photo that was taken in the late 30s. My great aunt sent it to me and asked me to see what I could do. The negative had been kept in a sleeve and was in great shape, so I pulled on the white gloves, put it in a frame and contact printed it onto some RC paper that I had in the darkroom. It looked amazing after 70 years! I sent it back to her and she was floored – she said that she hadn’t seen images of the people who were photographed since she was a child.
I’m not against or down on digital, but I think that I’ve made a mental shift in considering it as the main way to do things these days and may begin to use digital as a polaroid back for 4×5 or MF images.