As someone who frequently creates a still image by grabbing a frame a video from my digitized footage, I’m always mulling over the implications of this type of workflow and what it means for the future of still photography. When a friend of mine forwarded a press release of this yet to be released video camera called Red One (www.red.com), which is capable of producing 12 megapixel stills from the video footage I was interested to say the least. And did I mention it’s somewhat affordable? Still images have been made by doing most people call frame grabs of video or motion picture film stock for ages. There are significant limitations to that process (the details of which I won’t go into) but suffice to say motion picture studios continue to hire still photographers to capture the set and publicity photos.

I went to the red site and checked out their camera and in addition to looking like a weapon out of Battlestar Gallactica the frame grabs from the footage this thing captures are pretty much awesome. At $17k, it’s still a bit much for me, but it makes me wonder about the future of still photography as technology of video cameras get better and better.

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