Photos from videographer?

Re: Photos from videographer?

• MobKaz member

  

  January 2018

  knottiefffba29fdfa7a99b said:

  Hi! We're getting married this November. Photos aren't as important to us as a really amazing video would be but we don't have a huge budget for both. Are there any videographers in the area that will give us still frames from the video or would we have to use a photographer and a videographer? Thanks!

  
  Hi!  You have posted this question on a national board.  There are local wedding boards that would be able to give you more regional responses.
  
  @PhotoKitty, can you possibly move this to her local board?
  
  
  
  

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• knottiefffba29fdfa7a99b member

  

  February 2018

  I'm sorry, I posted this on my local board last week and got no responses. I'll just take it down.

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• charlotte989875 member

  

  February 2018

  knottiefffba29fdfa7a99b said:

  I'm sorry, I posted this on my local board last week and got no responses. I'll just take it down.

  Where are you located?
  
  I think what you’re asking for in terms of stills from videos is a pretty uncommon request and is likely to be something only professionals can answer. If you’re trying to save money on photography one thing you could consider would be to go to a local art school and see if any advanced photography or fine arts students or recent graduates are trying to build a portfolio. They’ll likely be cheaper than experienced professionals but you can still get quality photos. 

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• MobKaz member

  

  February 2018 edited February 2018

  knottiefffba29fdfa7a99b said:

  I'm sorry, I posted this on my local board last week and got no responses. I'll just take it down.

   No apologies necessary.  I saw that you were a new poster. Often, new posters don’t realize that there are local boards on which to ask questions for specific local vendors.  I was just trying to get you the best answers for your specific question.   No harm, no foul. 
  
   Unfortunately, some of the local boards can be extremely slow. 

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• knottie6d56aee1846002c5 member

  

  March 2018

  I'm a photographer and can probably help a little here!   
  
  You certainly CAN take still frames from a video.   That said...  they'll most likely be blurry and low in contrast.  I don't think you'll like them.
  
  The reasons for that are shutter speed, and compression.   
  
  We shoot photos of a wedding at a fairly fast shutter speed so that you don't visibly move while the shutter's open.  That's how we get sharp and clear images even when you're walking or dancing.  For video you actually want the opposite-  when things are moving you WANT them to get a little blurry or it ends up looking fake!  So when you take a still capture from a video, even of a still person it won't have the same level of crispness... and if the person or camera were moving at all, it'll be a downright mess.  Going through the video frame by frame to try to find the ones that ISN'T a blurry disaster would take a long time - I'd charge you more for THAT than I would to just shoot photos!   
  
  Then there's compression.  The full data from a camera sensor is HUGE.  So we have to compress it so more than a handful will fit on a disk... and so it won't take DAYS for a website to load.  Since a video is essentially 24 or 30 or 60 photos EVERY SECOND it gets compressed a lot.  Since still photos are, well, still, you can examine them more closely - so those get compressed just a little.   Now... to compress images - you have to throw some of the data away.  The only way to take a gallon of water down to a cup of water is to get rid of a lot of water, right?   So compressing an image lowers it's quality.  You don't want to try to print and hang on the wall a still image that's been compressed enough to have been a video frame at one point!   And also... going from the video format to an image format requires that it get compressed a SECOND TIME... and degrading the quality of an image twice makes it even worse.  Everything will end up grey and fuzzy, with less color and dynamic range.  
  
  That was a lot of technical info... but I wanted to make sure you had enough background to understand what was being said if you DO talk to your videographer about it.   In my opinion... and I never recommend this...  but if you REALLY don't care about photography enough to pay extra for it - you'd get better photos by handing just about any cell phone made in the last couple of years to someone and letting them go wild with it.   Another option would be paying a student or new wedding photographer a couple hundred dollars - the danger with those options is that you don't have a guarantee that all of the photos will be good...  but I'm confident you'd get MORE acceptable pictures from them than you would from trying to pull them off the video!  

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