Video vs still photography, pt 2
Last time, I described a few technical differences that make video more difficult than stills. Video has a curious advantage over still photography, though: Because there’s less you can control in video and because the medium is inherently lower quality, videographers tend to be less technically fanatical than still photographers. Videographers understand “close enough”, thus freeing their mind for more creative things.
Still photographers, especially fine art photographers, have complete control of their image from beginning to end. They shoot it, process it, and create the final print themselves. The image doesn’t leave their hands until it is framed and ready to hang. Still photographers also have the luxury of much higher resolution, dynamic range, and time as they only work on a single image (see last post). All of this leads many photographers to be amazing control freaks.
I think Ansel Adam’s Zone system was the beginning of the Fanatical Photographers. These photographers work like meticulous scientists, using codified procedures to calibrate each piece of equipment their images pass through. At each step of their process, they measure the subtleties of their images using densitometers and colorimeters to extract every nuance of shade and color they possibly can. The truly fanatical spend as much time and money on their process as on making photos. When they look at a successful final image, they know that it is mathematically impossible to bring out any more detail, or to more accurately reproduce their vision. It’s all about end-to-end control.
This level of control is impossible in the world of video. Being a broadcast medium, the final image will appear on all manner of devices - from an iPod to a 9” CRT to a finely-tuned RunCo projector. Without control of the device, videographers have very little control over their final image. (Unlike still photographers who can choose the exact sheet of paper they’ll print on). Further, the medium itself is inherently low quality thanks to the NTSC video standard (which is actually a hack from the 40s to add color to black and white TV), so even if they could control the output device, there’s little could do with that control.
Videographers, therefore, don’t attempt to create images with mathematical precision. Instead, they seek to create images that look great no matter what device shows the final image. Colors and tones must look good relative to each other, rather than meeting any absolute measurement like a step wedge. As a result, videographers tend to rely on their eyes more, asking “does it look right?” instead of “is the color accurate?” They don’t fall into the trap I see many still photographers fall into - so obsessed with details that they forget to look at the image as a whole. Videographers can stay focused on the aesthetic instead of the technical. I think this is very healthy - it’s the image that moves people, not the fact that you managed 7 zones of latitude.
