Hopped-up junkies with twitchy video
Greensboro news photographer and blogger Stewart Pittman (a.k.a. “Lenslinger”) noticed an army of tiny cameras and citizen journalists at the implosion of a local building Monday and writes of feeling a bit like a dinosaur:
How long before my oversized fancy-cam looks like an early 80’s bag phone? About the same time the six o clock news begins looking like it was shot by a hopped-up junkie with a twitchy digital, I‘m guessing. The next ten years promise to feature a rapid breakdown of my chosen craft. Whatever new paradigm takes hold, it’s a safe bet the two-person news crew is an endangered species, driven to oblivion by technology and methods that are faster and cheaper, but not necessarily better.
Stewart laments the loss of quality that Betacams and two-person crews bring to television, and hopes he’ll be doing something else when these little cameras take over TV news. It’s an understandable position, but I was there for identical arguments when we moved from CP16a film cameras to videotape, and I firmly believe this is a similar situation. It’ll be different, but the question of whether it’ll be better or worse can’t be answered ahead of time.
Stewart is a terrific shooter and an excellent writer. If his blog isn’t on your regular reading list, I encourage you to make it so.
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