VideoJournalism

It’s coming…

…and it is unbelievable. Just got a FB posting from a comrade at an O&O in SF that he is no longer shooting with a pro camera, but a Panasonic HMX370. Jeez. Under $10k and 1/3 inch chips. I kinda expected this revolution to move in insidiously…in the night, beginning with smaller markets. Well, yeah, it has…but seriously. San Francisco? Babycams?

I was just kinda joshing when I posted back in February about what the future might hold for broadcast camerafolk:

While there will always be room for big bucks, high end, expensive cameras, I am convinced that the news broadcast standard is the 1/3 inch three chip pro-sumer camera…with of course, the requisite bells and whistles. XLR, manual controls, shoulder mount, good glass.

Shudder…kinda glad I’m not in the mix. Forward movement is always accompanied by some degree of jerkiness and readjustment. The leap from 16mm film to 3/4 (ick) tape was nasty. We went from shooting crisp clear film to ugly smeared blotches of color. Cheap little plastic cameras with cheap little plastic lenses.

Hmmmm…that sounds familiar.

Then from there we moved up to decent cameras (TK76) to better cameras and a better format (Betacam). The switch to digital and DVCPro cams was sweet music…better quality, more solid, everything the old cams had plus more!

And now back to the past again…cheap little camera, cheap little lens.

All I can predict now is…the quality WILL get better…the cameras will become more professional.

Until that next best idea for advanced technology leaps out in front of us…

Cyndy Green Avatar

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Cyndy Green
28 years in television news 10 years teaching high school (English & Broadcasting) 6 years freelancing as a Videojournalist/visual storyteller Currently retired but still creating visual stories…
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2 responses to “It’s coming…”

  1. Peg Avatar
    Peg

    Sadly, this will continue with the cutting of budgets, but also with the fact that more and more people view on smartphones, online, etc and the viewer does not care about the quality of the picture. Most could not tell the difference even if they were put side-by-side on an HD screen. Evidence: go into almost any hotel room with a big screen – it will be set to zoom, wrong size, it will look like crap – but someone just wanted it to fill the screen – so it was changed.
    Sad by true.

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  2. cyndygreen Avatar
    cyndygreen

    True for electronic devices…lower quality can work. But (my opinion) as long as quality PRODUCTION VALUES are maintained…meaning content, light, audio, the camera can be of lesser quality if it delivers what is necessary for the audience to see what needs to be seen.
    And Peg…I don’t do enough hotel rooms to have that happen. Sorry…but looking forward to experiencing it. (Kind of like the cameramen who set the color on a monitor to look good, not knowing that the video still looks like crap.)

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