On film sets, you will always find a stills photographer, even if shot with the best qaulity film or video capture. Why? Moving images do not produce images sharp enough for still work and even with 35mm film, the capture area is smaller than 35mm stills as the film is moving vertically. The movement disguises the lack of sharpness, plus we tolerate a less sharp moving image.
Not necessarily as stills photographers have minutes, sometimes seconds to get a shot, between set ups and the lighting requirements for each medium are very different. One uses flash and one uses constant lighting, neither much use for the other. So as time is money, doing both on separate stages may be cheaper than combining sets and constantly getting in each other's way.
Also colour correct viewing on set is not so important/easy as with stills, plus the colour is always tweaked when graded afterwards. The DoP is probably much more aware of lighting colour issues than stills photographers, as they have always had more problems with colour temp matching than we do with our daylight flash heads. The video monitor is more for viewing performance and technical issues, boom in shot, focus pulls etc. Though a monitor that does show colour correctly is better than one that doesn't. Bear in mind the movie kit will have been hired for the day/job and the camera and monitor may never even have been used together before that morning, so precise calibaration is tricky.
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Well, ok, this I know because we do a lot of moving production, except all of this is old think.
To begin with if you have even experience prosumer 2k in the very compressed hdv codec you can eaasily find still imagery that is pretty amazing and will natively fill edge to edge a 24" monitor.
We colortime all of our final footage, even the hdv or standard def on a DiVinci 2k and shooting digitally verses shooting film still gives a lot better monitor view than a blinking pink and monotone lcd.
Since none of the imagery I mentioned will ever see theatrical big screen use, (it's all Television and smaller web play), even if the film had been digitatized in 4k (which it wasn't) it still offered very little benfit over shooting any form of digital video.
You did touch on a few points though and This is where the Red comes in, because up until now, there was no affordable to own, digital video camera that shot a 35mm cinema frame size (remember I said affordable).
Whether it's 4k, 3k to 2k, it's more in the compression, the bit depth and of course how well the Red or any digital capture works in higher isos.
Now I don't think that most moving imagery, regardless of quality will just exactly purpose over to stills for all the artistic reasons you mentioned. Rarely does a cinema session tell the story in one frame because moving to still are really different artistic mindsets.
That doesn't mean that the productions can't be dual purposed.
Tehnically,the process is converging and I know because I do this weekly, sometimes with just small add on crew for the moving imagery and sometimes with two full blown crews each sharing time.
The video I presented earlier was shot still and video, in studio AND on location, with dialog and MOS, and the stills are a international campaign the video will be purposed in multiple mediums AND it was shot in one day.
Once again, it's changing and we are converging and anyone that doesn't think so, hasn't tried it.
What you talking about is that traditional think that film crews believe a still photographer is either some guy that just shoots over their shoulder with a blimp, or does a "special" session that only needs a few dozen frames. Historically this has been the case, but if you do work in both mediums you can easily take the good aspects from both and apply them to both mediums.
What I am saying is both moving and stills can be accomplished professionally and with artistic merit on the same day, with a lot of the same crew and equipment.
There is a difference in the style and pace of the two mediums.
Film crews move like the army, slow and methodical and still crews even large ones move much faster and digital capture has only increased the speed in how we work.
The same will eventually hold for moving imagery and everyone working as an "image creator" should take the blinders off and at least be aware of what is possible.
Now I don't think that for a moment, every Hollywood production is going to stop shooting film with 475 people crews, or that every still photographer is going to throw a Red in the case and shoot everything on moving imagery and stills, but both could and probably should happen.
I am sure acceptence to the Red will be met by a lot of the same traditional old think, thought process that still capture went through with digital. Early on I shot digital and early on I heard all of the misinformation of "it doesn't look like film, blows the highlights, is too slow, too fast, too hard and too cumbersome and all that is just absoltuely not true, especially today where the medium format and 35mm digital still cameras I use far surpass anything that I previously shot in those formats with film.
Don't think the Red is not the beginning of this process and don't think that Canon, Panasonic and Sony aren't looking at that camera with some plans to compete. Also don't think that Kodak's film stock production is going to start shrinking and if cinema moves at the pace of still capture it will happen a lot faster than anyone plans.
Most importantly don't think a client's won't pick up on the fact that digital caputre in any genre produces faster and more production in a day than film.
Personally it makes not one bit of difference to me if a still photogrpaher shoots only stills or Peter Jackson never does anything but direct, but for a lot of clients it does matter a great deal.
It's going to change and like the original Canon 1ds completely changed still capture, the Red or any full frame 35mm affordable camera is poised to do that with moving film and the days of taking 2 hours to set up a camera will come to a close.
JR