Videography with ILCs
Videography
with ILCs
Ashok Kandimallaphotographic field for over three has been in the
decades and has extensive experience in both film and digital photography.
Being an electronics engineer by profession and a photographer, he
possesses a unique and deep insight into the technical aspects of digital
photography and equipment. He has published more than a 100 articles on
photography and some of his writings have also been published in the
well-known international magazine Popular Photography.
An avid collector of photographic books and vintage cameras, Ashok
has a keen interest in the history of photography and a passion
for sharing his knowledge on photography through teaching
and writing. He is the only Indian photographer to be featured on
the Nikon Centenary website. He is presently working as a Management
and Engineering consutant. He can be reached at [email protected].KandimallaAshokPart 1P
hotography has been a popular
hobby for more than a century.
A lesser-known companion
pastime was home movie making (or
cinematography), using film that was
8 mm or 16 mm in width. The resulting
film was displayed on a screen (or even a
wall) using a projector. Just as electronics
and later digital technology transformed
photography beyond all imagination,
home cinematography too went through
a revolution. The interesting point here
is that changes in this area occurred
even earlier. The reason for this is
obvious. Movie making is essentially
capturing motion and showing it. That is
exactly what TV broadcasting does. TV
capture (almost) from the inception was
electronic in nature, and this technology
trickled down to home cinematography
rather quickly. If that is cinematography,
what is video? This, as per Wikipedia, is
“using an electronic medium to record,copy, playback, broadcast and display
moving visual media”.
Home movie cameras that used film
were superseded by video cameras
which recorded electronically but not
digitally. Here, recording was done on
magnetic tape spooled in cassettes
(Picture 1), similar to audio cassettes
using analog technology. Examples
of this are VHS (by JVC, Panasonic
and others) and Betamax (by Sony).
There were other formats too. Analog
recording method did not last long
and was quickly replaced by digital
technology where all data is recorded
and stored using a stream of 0s and 1s.
The result is that the captured video
is a computer readable file that can
be processed in myriad ways. This is
the current technology. Amateur video
cameras are also popularly called
Handycams, though in reality this is a
Sony brand name. The display part too
underwent a drastic change. Gone are
the projectors which were a pain to set
up as the video captured can be shown
on a TV that every home has.A video cassette, VHS typePicture 1:http://www.smartphotography.inLEARNING92 | Smart Photography | September 201992