Can your camera phone take videos as well as stills? These days most camera phones can. The iPhone can’t. Is that a glaring omission? Are stills really out of date?
A huge amount is packed into the iPhone. Perhaps there’s no room for a movie camera. Hmm. Other phone camera makers cheerfully stuff in more megapixels plus a kitchen sink or two, usually into even smaller spaces.
Of course you won’t be very surprised to learn that there’s nothing like a movie camera for catching movement. For sport and such you can’t beat video.
On the other hand, once you’ve captured the action, how often do you dig your old videos out and sit down to watch them? You can leaf through a sheaf of stills in a jiffy.
Oh well. Showing off that roller-coaster (in terms of camera swerve if not of excitement) two hour video of Henry’s fishing trip could still come in handy for cutting short the visits of your less popular neighbours…
Movies are undeniably useful for demonstrating techniques like yoga, cooking or painting. There a video picture really may be worth a thousand words. For the rest – well, time’s money, and a video picture could certainly be worth a thousand minutes.
In other words, information videos are slow. Slow to watch. Slower to make.
MySpace movies on a web page may be popular, but time consuming. Reading text is not only faster, you control your speed and can vary it according to how well you know the subject. Flicking a switch to record a video may be quick enough. Making it worth watching is another story and can eat up hours, as Bean so truly and forcefully says in her blog Bah Humbug! Bah Video Blog!
There’s another reason – as I see it strongest of all – why you should keep on snapping stills with your camphone or digital camera. But I have been wittering on for long enough. That will have to wait for my next post.
Tags: drawing faces, iPad & iPhone Painting, Iphone Painting, photography
COME ALONG NOW, PUT YOUR WORST FACE FORWARD!
PAINTER 12 BRUSHES
I need stills that I can see everyday. My grandchildren and my daughters all live far away and I need constant reinforcement that they are part of my life. I need them for my comfort zone.
Carol
I’m real surprised the Iphone can’t take video. But, then again my phone can’t do anything except make a phone call and store numbers.
I’ve kind of fallen off the technology train.
And I don’t own a camera shamefully enough.
I do have an 8mm video camera though, and it’s a real good idea to use videos as stills. I’m going to have to find my battery charger, and hope the thing still works!
Great blog post!
I can see you are a Stills person Barb! Interested to hear about your visual aids.
I am delighted you appreciate my writing style. I do enjoy writing these blogs. The sound is very important to me, even like a poem. When I wrote travel pieces for British Airways I took great trouble to get the sound right – even though I knew my Purple Prose would be translated into umpteen languages, and of course the rhythm lost!
Come to think of it, that’s funny because my blog is all about visual thinking. Sound doesn’t come into it much.
I love your new coffee cup gravatar. It looks very good here on your post.
Well, let’s see — I capture shots to use in paintings. That’s one for the stills.
I take along reading and visual materials, stuffed into a manilla envelope, whenever I go to the coffee shop. Wouldn’t have means to watch movies.
I have video capability on my Blackberry, but it is a memory hog. Okay, I have a card — but still, I like my stills.
And I absolutely LOVE your sentence, “You can leaf through a sheaf of stills in a jiffy.” Had to read it twice for the alliterative benefit to my mental ears.
Barb
I keep coming back to read you just because I love your writing style! Other reasons too, but that’s a biggie.