Still photography v video

[dave lackey]

While spending the holidays at grandchildren's programs (Thanksgiving and Christmas themes), I was struck once again at how many videos my son records while I am merrily shooting the M3 at about a dozen photographs on average. I will look at these, place on computer monitors for a background, and probably frame a few over time.

But, with all of the hundreds of videos this year alone, how many of them will ever be viewed? Probably very few over the next year and none as the years go by. We have boxes of videos of our kids when they were young and I haven't looked any of them in at least 25 years. In fact, they do not even interest us enough to view... not really sure why.

But, with still photos, the best ones are framed and either hung on the wall, sitting on furniture or stored in a closet waiting for rotation.

Does anyone ever have "video night" or bore neighbors and family with video shows like our parents did in the fifties with slide shows? 😱😱

I don't know of anyone doing this. So, why the fascination with videos these days if they are never viewed?

 

[dave lackey]

Actually, I am thinking of a slide show complete with popcorn and candy for an evening with the family.

I may even go so far as to rent a large blow-up screen for the backyard.

Or get some speakers to hang on the windows of the car, set up a screen in the garage and just spend the evening watching the slide shows and/or videos in the privacy of our garage...wait a minute, both of our cars have consoles in the front. Where the hell did the bench seats go?😱

I love these restored speakers, although at $250/ea I cannot afford them yet.

 

[Michael Markey]

I gave up still photography for a number of years in favour of video which ,at the time, I considered had a number of advantages in terms of what I wanted to capture.
It was the purchase of a small digital to capture old parish records and my subsequent disenchantment with it coupled with a friend reminding me of the beauty of slide film that brought me back to still photography.
I have subsequently transferred my video tapes on to CD.
I still get asked to take videos mainly of horse competitions or when people are having lessions in order that they can learn from the movement.
Not yet gone down the popcorn route though 🙂

 

[thegman]

I've taken the occasional video on holiday, they get watched maybe once, and that's it. I think the problem is often that they're stuck on the computer, rather than on the big screen TV. Sure I could hook up HDMI cables from my laptop, and it'll work fine, but who can be bothered?

At the moment, for me, shooting video is not any fun, and too much hassle to watch the results.

 

[benlees]

My wife got an iphone for Xmas and she already had a small video camera. The iphone videos got watched many times by many people because they are mostly short and often quite funny. The ones from the video camera are of dance performances of our daughter and more 'serious' stuff like that. These will only get watched once or twice but are considered to be very important.

My dad used to do slide shows and I vaguely remember some 16mm movies. Sadly, the family dealt with these showings with equal reluctance. 😀 Sometimes, the movies were silly but there was always a "Quit wasting film!!" somewhere in there.

The ritual of setting up the screen and the projector is gone. If you use an iphone people don't have time to scurry away!