So you got your Zgrip iPhone Jr and want to shoot a video of you powersliding through your local downtown area just like the guys in Fast and Furious. How do you best pull that off?
You could tape your iPhone to the front-bumper of your car. Or you could mount the iPhone on the Zgrip iPhone Jr and then, again through a 1/4 inch screw mount, on the new Fat Gecko Mini which you can then attach via its suction cup to the hood of your car. Or the fender of your ATV. Or to the helmet that you wear when riding your motorcycle. Or whatever other vehicle you would like to take this ride in.
The adjustable knuckle design and 3″ extender allow for 360° tilt, turn & rotation to capture all of the best filming angles in any activity. The Fat Gecko mini can carry up to 4 pounds of equipment – no problem for your iPhone with Zgrip iPhone Jr, but also not for a Flip Camera or even a small camcorder. Or a small DSLR connected via a remote cable release for both video and still photography.
Just don’t get caught by your local police when pulling stunts!
Price: $39.99
When Zgrip released its Zgrip iPhone Pro video mount, we liked the design, but did not like its high price at all. Zacato now released a consumer version, called the Zgrip iPhone Jr (couldn’t someone have come up with a better name?)
In their consumer product, they addressed two of my major gripes with the product. For starters, the price is much more affordable at $69 (vs $295 for the Pro version). Secondly, the grip comes with a 1/4 inch thread on the bottom so you can finally mount it on a tripod without having to buy Zgrip’s accessory. The major difference in features between the two is that Zgrip removed all the adjustability features. This is fine – you can always adjust the tripod that the Zgrip Jr is mounted on, esp. if you use a leveling base
on your tripod like I do.
Price: $69.00 minus a $10 instant rebate that you can get from their store before August 15, 2009.
We are now at a very interesting point in the evolution of digital imaging, one which will affect and perhaps alter how we view the capture and recording of our world and the events that shape our lives, aesthetically, practically and monetarily.
In the last year especially, we have begun to see the most ubiquitous imaging devices on the planet, mobile phones, offer a combination of still imaging up to 12MP with video capture up to 720P and even 1080i. In the last 6 months, we’ve started to see more and more digital compact cameras and D-SLRs also begin to offer video capture at HD resolutions, though mostly 720p and with very pronounced length restrictions (5-7 minutes or so, mainly because AVIs are restricted to 2GB).
This raises some very interesting questions:
Will future professional still photographers be expected to shoot both video and still images?
This is a question that has been discussed at length in podcasts like “This Week in Photography”, and the consensus seems to be that, yes, more and more professional photographers will also become professional videographers [Editor's Note: National Geographic will not hire any photographers any longer who do not have experience with shooting/editing video]. It’s not as clear whether professional videographers will be expected to go the other way, and become professional still photographers. I tend to agree that we will start to see pros fuse the two media into their assignments, though they might not always succeed equally well at both. Economics will dictate increasingly that they do both.
Will it make sense to capture stills while shooting video simultaneously?
I think it does and will. I currently shoot video in HD with a Sony camcorder. It has 3MP still image capabilities during video capture but only four at a time (4MP in unlimited numbers when not shooting video). While they are not the best stills that I could shoot (vs. my Nikon D300 or my Canon 720is) they are good enough to keep me from stopping my video shooting and switching to still images; I’m more frustrated that I can only shoot 4 at a time without having to stop and re-start the video shoot than I am troubled by the quality difference between these 3MP images and those obtainable via other dedicated still cameras.
I see this as the best fusion of the capabilities, because there are moments during a video shoot that I want to capture as standalone images and if I could capture really good 12MP stills while shooting video, I would be a happy camper.
What evolution will there be in the way still images and videos shot during the same event or time period are packaged and presented for playback?
Obviously, you could run a slideshow of the still images and then show the video sequence or vice versa. I wonder, though, if younger people who will grow up with devices that natively offer both kinds of imaging, will also grow up to expect a new kind of merger of these two different media types into a single kind, e.g.
- Overall screen is video with stills inserted as ’tiles’ into the video screen
- Stills interspersed with video sequences in linear playback
- Photo albums which have some pages that are still images and some that are video-screens — perhaps all the pages in the book are actually advanced forms of e-ink which can be programmed to display either stills or videos [Editor's Note: My vision of a newspaper in 10 years: A foldable OLED sheet of paper whose content is customized by you and updated dynamically. It is represented like a regular paper, but when you tap on an image, a video will play.]
I would love to see a future Apple iTablet (or whatever it is called) have this capability – perhaps have stills and videos presented side by side and when you touch one it fills the screen and plays itself back.
Killer question: when is it most appropriate to shoot video and when is it most appropriate to shoot still images or will people just automatically expect to do both at the same time
This is, for me, the hardest question to answer. I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the psychology of perception relative to specific kinds of events or situations and whether one is more logical in some situations vs. the other. Clearly, in the case of performances and ceremonies and toasts, video is the most essential medium, because you want to capture how the event unfolds in a way that still images can’t convey as poignantly–the persistence of continuous capture over time makes a difference.
However, there are many other situations where I can clearly see the rationale for still images over video – a landscape shot, a family portrait, candid shots where you want to see how a certain person looks at a given point in time, abstracts, certain sports moments, particularly where a son or daughter is involved.
For the rest, I see the usage model prevailing where you shoot video with the option of also shooting stills during the video capture. This capability is not quite to the level it should be yet in terms of quality, but it will get there.
I’m sure Veit will have some things to say on this topic and I will write more on this as well.
What do you think about this topic? Let us know.
It is probably a cliche by now that all iPhone photos end up on Facebook (OK, some go to Flickr as well). But that is not true. Just witness Shutterfly’s latest financial results which they announced this week. Despite the recession, their revenue is up year-over-year, with customers up by 13% and orders by 6%. But the most important number is the revenue for their Personalized Products and Services, which includes posters, mugs, photo books and other items – essentially all high-margin items. Their revenue is up 20% year-over-year. That’s important, since photo printing services like Shutterfly typically sell smaller prints at cost to bring customers into their online store and make money by up-selling them to books, posters and large prints.
What does this mean? People treasure their personal moments. Not just on Facebook, but also in photo books. Documenting your kids life? A wedding, a party, a vacation? It’s a no-brainer. With more and more people abandoning their point&shoots and taking pictures with camera phones, that accounts for additional revenue for Shutterfly. Just check out Joe’s post on mobile imaging statistics and you know iPhone users are prime candidates for photo printing services. Hence their iPhone app (which we reviewed).
Recession or not, mementos are important to people, thus their willingness to spend money on them. Add the convenience of creating books online and not having to run to your local lab and you can see why Shutterfly’s results were positive! And why Facebook is not the only place where people’s iPhone pictures end up on.
