Videography
with ILCs
Ashok Kandimalla has been in the
photographic field for over three
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].Ashok
KandimallaPart 1
P
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were superseded by video cameras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.Picture 1:
A video cassette, VHS typehttp://www.smartphotography.inLEARNING
92 | Smart Photography | September 2019