Video is not important to me. As many had said it’s just the logic of our economic system that upgraded must be available at all cost. Influencers/reviewers/forums then blow up minute differences to enormous proportion.
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So, are content creators driving the market these days?
Yes. We’re all content creators, BTW…
Who else would compel a manufacturer to make and sell cameras? I know I’m generalizing, but that’s really the essence of the dynamic. Video delivery is a lot more accessible, so more folk are using it to communicate. Thus, the evolution of the market.
I’m presently dubbing our Hi-8 family video to digital, and am reminded of how laborious it used to be to capture and disseminate such. Now, there are video ads in places we used to see still images. So yes, the manufacturers are going to facilitate that content.
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Puh, I never found these live-photos suitable for anything. Not good for digital use, apart from very rudimental snipplets, not suitable for any photo related work-flow and not suitable for printing. What use do you envision for something like this? What “product” would you like to create?
I think I would enjoy a mode on my camera that takes photos like always, but additionally saves a short video clip of an adjustable number of seconds before and after the shot.
Kind of like the pre-capture mode that saves not just the current frame, but also ten or thirty frames from the second prior. Just as a short video file instead of a sequence of pictures, and for both before and after the trigger moment.
Some Nikon cameras allow taking photos while video is rolling, which is also similar functionality (although these photos are cropped and JPEG only apparently). Wildlife photographers seem to use this for shooting video and photo content simultaneously.
I envision going back over family pictures mostly, and selectively keeping some clips that show some emotion or situation. I’d mostly disable the mode for static stuff such as landscapes, and quickly cull and delete the videos for most uninteresting shots.
If the video bitrate were low, it would probably use a negligible amount of card storage.
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Yeah, and as recovery methods get better over time, who knows what people in 20 or 30 years will be able to do with 1080p video improvement wise.
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One time I was on a whale spotting tour in Maine, and the Live Photos feature saved several of my shots from being a total waste. A pod of dolphins cruised alongside our boat, and it seems that I was late on every attempt to capture them. They had submerged when I managed to take my shots. Then, back at home, I noticed that the shots were Live Photos and, upon playing them, I found that there were quite a few good frames of the dolphins jumping above the water.
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There is a pre trigger feature in some cameras. so it buffers a few frames after half press before you fully press the trigger just for that. Fuji calls it Pre Shot. need to check how it is called with your camera and if it has it.
also for many of those very dynamic targets you will need to burst anyway.
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I have a Canon R7 and what I love about it is that it is equally a great stills camera or a video camera. There is no downside to having both great capabilities in the one camera. It is a win win for me when I go travelling.
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This thread has taught me that there is a “video” button on my camera…
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I think that there is a substantial market, and in any case the hardware demanded by video overlaps a lot with what is needed by a lot of “stills” shooters if they do any kind of action photography (fast, smart AF, burst modes). Camera manufacturers certainly compete on the latter.
Trade-offs arise in two areas I know of: sensor size (you cannot do fast readout of high-resolution pixel sensors without some tricks at the moment) and overheating for some frame rates and formats. But if the user is satisfied with a 25M pixel-ish sensor size and does not shoot long videos, then neither is an issue and practically there are no downsides from making your camera do video.
I think what is going on is that MILCs became so good at doing video that now they compete with professional equipment. People routinely rig out high-end MILCs for movies, from my perspective these look like the camera developing some sort of skin condition that resulted in an outgrowth of cables, microphones, focus rigs, grips, extra batteries, monitors, with the poor camera buried deep within, but from their perspective they are getting a camera for cinema for a fraction of what it used to cost.
The same thing happened with cine lenses. In some categories, sub $2k cine lenses would have sounded like a joke a few years ago. Now third-party manufacturers make them for almost all relevant mounts.
Personally, I do not shoot video because I like to print selected photos to albums. My experience is that anything on the computer/servers is in a kind of hibernation, potentially available instantly but no one will look at it anyway. While if it is on the bookshelf we open it from time to time.
But if I had the time to learn properly shooting and color grading videos and all the various tricks, it would be an interesting hobby.
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This will probably sound dumb but part of the issue I have with video is how to distribute it. There are times when video might more easily capture something, like falling blossoms, but unless you want to join the social media game of winning the algorithm, I’m not sure what to do with it afterwards. I’ve obviously sent short phone clips to people by message but you can only really send them one or maybe two clips rather than say a whole bunch of stills. I’ve even shot some video in whatever the default codec is on my camera but then it just disappears somewhere unused.
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I’m a big fan of the ‘do one job, and do it well’ philosophy; I also like simplicity. My ideal camera would be dedicated to stills only — I’d happily exchange the added cost of video unctionality for an upgrade in build quality, erganomics, etc. similarly, I’d love the option of a dedicated video camera.
But this is just me. Some may think me a bit weird - LOL.
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During my bike ride the other day I asked myself the following question:
How much of the price is basically carried because of the multiple markets the product can go into. Most photo only cameras are kinda niche and the high price reflects that.
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The marginal cost of this may be much lower than you think.
Consider any reasonably recent mid-tier camera from your favorite line. Not the flagship, not the video focused model, not even the one they call “hybrid”. I guarantee it will shoot decent video. Not something you can color grade with a lot of latitude, but at 4K it will be acceptable, if you fiddle with some presets it will give you pleasant colors, orders of magnitude better than what a camcorder used to do in the dark ages of 10 years ago.
Now, what would you remove from this camera to make it cheaper?
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I just realized what I really hope for in the GR IV: larger holes for the neck/wrist strap. The current holes are tiny and most straps don’t fit in them.
I had to hunt for a strap and I still wasn’t 100% happy with that I have.
Another 2mm would make a huge difference.
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This is one of the best things about peak design, the whole system uses the same anchors. Although I bet it must be hard to thread those things through the GR holes… It was already hard enough on my x100v.
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Yeah the peak design anchors don’t fit easily. I saw a guy who used a piece of dental floss to pull the anchor thru, I tried but was not successful.
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I just watched Omar’s amusing video on GRIV complaints. I have never owned one, so it’s not really fair for me to complain or say what should have been added, but I can understand why some people are a little underwhelmed with the specs of the latest version, especially after the long wait. I can also understand that Ricoh’s philosophy is to iterate on a proven design rather than overhaul it, and if lots of people love the GRIII, then why mess with it too much?
That said, it’s not perfect, and it will be interesting to see if they add new features post launch and/or create different versions of the IV other than an x version.
I definitely agree with Omar’s view that there is a huge opportunity for OM System here. I think a weatherproofed competitor to the GRIV could be a very interesting option.
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Weatherproof with their great O.I.S., EVF, fast AF, flip-up screen, … something they already pulled off with their relatively compact, original E-M5 back in 2012 … 13 years ago.
At the risk of repeating myself … I never got it why Olympus or now OM Systems never jumoed on that train and rolled out a compact fixed focal length camera like the Fuji X100 or the Ricoh GR with an m43 or APS-C sensor. Can’t be that hard for them to design a compact f2 pancake lens that could trade blows with the glass on the aforementioned models.
Quo vadis O.M. systems?
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If you use a Ricoh GR long enough you’ll just get used to framing with it
This is so true.
The video makes some good points… but Olympus is going to build a competitor? meh.
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