Steve Weinrebe's Mode Studio

Harris Fogel is the former Chairman of the Media Arts Department at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, an Associate Professor of Photography, and Director of the Sol Mednick Gallery and Gallery 1401, as well as director of iTunesU for the university. As host and creator of MacEditionRadio, Harris is usually heard at the other end of the microphone, and he graciously agreed to be interviewed for this column.

SW: Do you think the need for shooting both stills and video on one system is driving the converging of mediums, or is the need driving the manufacturers to come up with solutions?

HF: First of all I’m not totally convinced that, even with the technology where it is right now, that any serious journalist would use a video camera, instead of a traditional camera, for still capture. While there is video technology out there that starts at very low prices, those cameras are not as good as still cameras.  I think the question is whether still capability is a value-added feature in a video camera, to capture the occasional still, or is it a value-added feature that answers the need of journalists who want to combine video with their still photography. I’m not sure that it is the latter. I think that people are using two different mediums, and that the still capability of video cameras is not on the same level as the still medium. While news organizations that ask their journalists to shoot both still and video want them to combine the jobs, they are two totally different tasks that require a totally different mindset. The technology is driving that possibility, to take a still image with one camera as well as record video, and there is something to be said for that, but that capability has been present for several years now and not been used that heavily. So I’m not sure that it’s the technology that is driving the convergence, or that it is even being driven. It’s an assumption that the users of video equipment are even going to use it that way, and I don’t believe that’s a well-founded assumption.

SW: Several newspapers are using frame grabs from video for print editions of the newspaper. Photo journalists that traditionally carried still camera gear are now instead shooting HD video, from which an image can be printed or a video clip can be posted on the web. Can you comment on that?

HF: That is true, but I think that has to do with cost cutting as opposed to wanting a high quality image. Imagine that you are out on assignment with an HD camera, and you capture what is essentially a low resolution image, when you have one of those Pulitzer prize moment, well you’re stuck. You’re stuck using the wrong equipment, and that image will have limited usefulness simply because of the technology employed. Until we see the ability to have RAW image capture with total malleability of the file, like you can with any DSLR now, or even point-and-shoots for that matter, I think this has more to do with cost cutting than it has to do with having the journalists do the best quality work.

SW: It’s interesting that the news seems to evolve around HD video being used for stills as well, considering what a different form factor video is compared to still cameras. Yet amateur still cameras do quite a capable job of shooting consumer quality video. Do you think there will be a push by the like of Canon and Nikon to fit another chip into their still cameras for video clips?

HF: Yes, I do. There are a couple of different issues here; a technical issue, and then there is a practical issue. When I was at PMA in January I saw a camera from General Electric that was a point-and-shoot camera that had HDMI output; so here was a camera for a few hundred dollars that produced HD level imagery which could interface with HD displays, not only very simply, but which would keep the digital signal path intact. So we already have, at the low end, the ability to do pretty stunning still capture; and that camera would also do HD video, all in the palm of your hand. So obviously that’s the direction that we’re going. We have some other convergent technologies such as the digital television requirement coming next year – which will force new technologies, such as the need for an HDMI port in every consumer television. When you have digital capability people are going to say, “why can’t I plug in my camera?” That will be a natural fit. The question on the professional side, the journalists side, when their still cameras are moving towards larger and larger chip sizes, that if the manufacturers stick another chip into the camera (such as Olympus did with their E-330, with two chip sets, one for the live view and one for the image capture), the photographer might just turn on the video and let it roll. But that is not a technology question, it’s an intent question. If you’re out there on assignment shooting still images, the way you frame your images, the distance you get to your subject – all of those issues are compositional and journalistic elements – they are not necessarily the same elements that you would be concerned with shooting video. With video you have to be concerned that the camera can’t move around too fast, you can’t have jitter, you can’t be swinging it wildly, you have to stay focused on a subject, and you have to really worry about the sound quality of the audio capture. If editors tell their reporters to go out and capture everything with an HD camera, I’m not sure they would be happy about the coverage. They may have some great video, but not have some great still images out of that session. And if they have great still imagery, they may not have video that’s worth posting. Even if the technology does afford both still photography and video at the same commensurate level, they are usually very different aesthetic and practical choices that go into making those images. We’ve been able to get still image capture for nearly a decade with video cameras, and I don’t know that the capability has achieved widespread use.

SW: Do you think HD video has given that capability a quality boost that might push the use of video cameras to shoot stills as well?

HF: I’m not sure the lack of adoption is because of quality. You can’t serve two masters effectively and do a great job for either. Video capture is a radically different act than still capture.

SW: You mentioned consumer cameras, and one camera that has gotten a lot of publicity recently is the new Casio model, the Exilim EX-F1 that will shoot 60 frames per second at 6 megapixels. In Photoshop you can take those 60 frames, stack them together, and turn them into a video clip. So here we have the capability to frame as if shooting stills, but turn the stills into video as well. If a photographer is shooting an event with equipment that has that sort of capability, and there are enough stills, even at 12 frames per second, to create a web quality video for a publisher’s web site (albeit a video made that way will not include audio) doesn’t that add value to the photo shoot?

HF: I still think that predicates that the world will be interested in a 15 second, audio-free clip. I’ve been watching CNN recently on the web, and there was a story about a deadly snake that washed up on a beach somewhere. But there was no story, just a video. The video showed someone putting the snake in a bag, but it had no meaningful content. It was world-wide news, and was a feature story of the day. But it had no longevity, none of the traditional attributes that would make that a newsworthy story for a publisher. No details about the snake and its deadly poison, or how rare the snake was. All those elements are traditional elements that might be included in the audio in a story. But to just have this video of the snake with none of the journalistic details simply didn’t work. Right now we are enamored with the YouTube mentality of brief motion clips, but I’m not convinced that [mentality] will be around much longer. Just like how at first everyone thought cable TV was amazing because it had hundreds of channels, it didn’t take long for Bruce Springsteen to write a song with the lyrics, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” and of course now there are an unlimited number of “channels” with questionable content.

In the same vein, I’m not convinced that just having video capabilities will have that huge an impact. That’s not to say I wouldn’t want a camera with those capabilities. One of the most compelling pieces of footage in the last couple of years was the documentary on James Nachtwey working on location photographing the site of burials from mass executions in the former eastern block countries, and he’s got a video camera attached to his hot shoe, attached to the Canon still camera that he’s shooting with; so we’ve got this reportage of him on location. But once again, it’s not about that video footage. In that documentary, when the filmmakers interspace that footage between the video crew’s footage, there is no comparison. One is a video production with all the elements of good news gathering and documentary footage, and the other one, the footage from the video attached to the still camera, is a record of where he’s been, which is compelling but never so much as his individual images. So even though the technology may allow this convergence, as an editor I still have to tell my photographer, or my journalist, or my writers, what is the preeminent reason for them being out there; is it still capture or is it video capture. If it is either of those, then by necessity one of those technologies takes second. And so by necessity there’s a really good chance that secondary media isn’t going to be as useful and as important a capture as newsgathering, as history, or even have the longevity to drive people to that web site, meaning money lost in advertising dollars. The same values that instill good coverage still do so, and the technology is not the issue there.

SW: Do you think fine-art photographers and videographers will embrace technology that will allow their equipment to blend stills and video in interesting ways?

HF: Yes, I think that from a fine art perspective, and experimental film and video perspective, the ability to have still capture [in video cameras] is fantastic. If you think back to the history of movie making, filmmakers have always embraced the idea of a single image. Cinematic history is full of editors that have frozen a single image, and held that on screen, usually as a way of providing gravitas to an iconographic moment, or iconographic situation, in the film. So once again the still image becomes a demarcation of something of note, which is really interesting unto itself – the idea that in order to create a really compelling moment in cinema we have to stop it into still photography. Even the Antonioni film “Blow Up” is predicated on the section of the still images. Even though now it seems like kind of an old fashioned and slow film it still works on the idea that everything culminates on these still images and goes back to the linear, or non-linear, flow of the movie. I think that from the creative standpoint we are going to see tremendous uses for this. Now, that has to be weighed against the fact that you can already do this pretty effectively in Final Cut, or any non-linear editing program. You can do a frame grab with the flick of a finger, something which used to be quite difficult. The difference here is that the quality is going to be much higher.

The only thing I want to say on a technical note is that with the cameras that I’ve been playing with, that are on the consumer level, you can’t do both at once. At least the ones I’ve tested you’re either filming or doing still capture. So the question of whether you could be filming and press a button to get a still of this or a still of that, that’s a different question. Also if you were using sound that was onboard, in other words using the microphone built into that camera, just merely the act of clicking that button would send a shudder through the camera and you would hear that noise. So [the act of still capture] wouldn’t even be invisible. The only way around that would be to use a shotgun microphone off camera, connected to the video camera, which once again gets you back to a traditional video shoot. Unless, if photographers are video taping, just turning on the video camera and letting it run, and then positioning themselves and going “bang, bang-bang-bang, I want those individual captures”, that’s the way I could see it happening, and I could see it happening quite naturally if people became adept with it. You could just let the camera run as a safety in the background in case something outrageous happens, but while you’re doing it you’re consciously composing and triggering these still images. But once again, it gets back to the question of how that footage gets used. Footage that is run in the background as your safety is going to be a totally different kind of quality than footage that was consciously set up for video use, and similarly it’s going to be very different for the still capture. So the technology may afford the convergence, but it could be that life doesn’t afford us that convergence.

SW: Thank You!

HF: You’re quite welcome.

Posted by Steve Weinrebe (Interview conducted April 28, 2008)