I’m a big fan of the DSLRs with videofunction. Actually it was exactly what i was looking for for a long time as it now allows me to combine photography and video in one tool. For multimedia it is even better as i can mix video and photography with the same visual look. So i first see the advantages of that incredible tools. But i’m maybe also an exception in the way that i was always doing video and stills. In the time before the HDDSLRs i was carrying both DSLR and a videocamera with me most of the time, most of the time resulting in a lack of videoquality as i carried only a small cam. It is crazy to look at older films of mine like the Laos Diaries when it comes to the videoquality. The DSLRs nowadays allow me to shoot both in high quality. Right now a big market is coming up for all the tools that should help to make it actually usable for shooting video. There are limitations for sure, but i think even without big extra gear you can rack it up to something working also for many documentary shoots. I’ll post about that maybe at a subsequent date.
In the last months there was a discussion coming up over at the DSLRnewsshooter blog about this DSLRs being too cinematic. One of the major stones of contention was a short piece by Khalid Mohtaseb who covered the aftermath of the Haiti quake and in his spare time shot this very stylized footage with a 5D Mark II. Before i go on with my thoughts about it, here is the piece first.
When i first saw this montage i loved it right away. What i loved about it, beside beautiful pictures, so powerful? Mainly that this was at that time one of the first pieces that actually also showed a life beside dead bodies and looting where most media outlets focused on. This piece is in my opinion not a documentary, it is a montage of moments, a capture of atmosphere enpowered by the music. It points us in a certain direction, but this in a very powerful way. It lacks any story, but in my opinion at that time it was a great extension to what we have seen. And imagine that powerful pictures in a documentary with a powerful story. Wouldn’t it rise the level of the production? Critics pointed that this is a disaster zone, not some hollywood set. That this romanized the situation. But i think this is not the reality we could see in Haiti, but also the disaster porn we could see for the first two weeks. Journalism is for me all about balance and trying to tell a story right. I always saw that piece not standing alone, but as part of a bigger picture that was created at that time. And it was for sure some of the most powerful footage i saw as it was powerful without the drama of the disaster porn and suffering that we saw for weeks.
The visual quality of this DSLR footage is amazing, why shouldn’t we start to use it for documentaries and journalism? It is like saying you can build the house by hand instead of using tools. It is a development in the tools and at the end it will give us more possibilities to tell the stories than we had before. New visual language, new possibilities because of it’s size. Maybe a bit less unmotivated usage of a slider than here. But at the end it is all about using it to tell the story. 70% story, 20% craft, 10% tools – something like that. It is about the story. All the rest is only about how we are able to tell it in the best way. And when that DSLR is the best tool for what we wanna tell (what is not always the case of course), why not use it?
