But they told me size didn't matter!!!

Is that title professional? Nope, but it's making me chuckle every time I look at it so it's staying.

A few weeks back I wrote a mini-column in a newsletter in which I said that "the ever-shifting technology landscape is going to create a much larger, louder and bitter debate" than the one that occurred at the onset of HD cameras between the film devotees and those who were in the video world. This wasn't difficult to predict, but the speed and volume has been surprising (although maybe it shouldn't be in this world of Twitter, online forums and 24/7 in-your-palm web access.)

Here's a really quick timeline of the past couple of weeks:

Nikon finally announces their new still camera, the D3s, which many had hoped would offer the video functionality of the Canon 5dMkII if not radically improve upon it. It doesn't. Grumblings around the web point out that it's not full frame and doesn't shoot 1080p. It's just a really good stills camera with video capabilities. The horror... This is the first real sense of how petty the arguments are going to become, in my opinion.

Jim Jannard announces that there will be a RED announcement. Reaction not dissimilar to the Beatles landing at JFK occurs. Suggesting that RED is now reacting to Nikon and Canon would not go down well, I'm quite sure.

In a surprise email, Sony says that they will have a BIG announcement on October 20th. The web starts to buzz -- could the giant be stepping into the large sensor video camera world? Could they be adapting their Alpha line for the EX cameras?

The anniversary of the Canon EOS line is October 20th, so people wait to see what they will announce. After the success of the aforementioned 5dMkII there are high hopes.

At the stroke of midnight Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Vincent Laforet posts a film on his site that he shot with the new Canon 1dMkIV. Nocturne (which has since been pulled at the request of...Canon...gotta love those multi-nationals and their bureaucracy...) highlights the insane low-light capabilities of the camera. However, grumblings around the web (yep, again) point out that it's not full frame and costs $4,000. Which is less than the HVX200 costs, but still...

After a day of leaks Sony officially announce...a revised EX1! And a big 2/3" EX3! Reaction is somewhere between pleased and complete and utter apathy.

We're now all waiting for October 30 so we know when RED is going to jump in. Or say they are going to jump in. Or will announce that they plan to jump in at some point but, you know, everything changes...

And that's really where we are: everything is changing. The emergence of V-DSLRs should force the traditional camera powerhouses to stop looking at different ways to repackage what has been done before and start looking at introducing technologies that have never been considered for video. Processing power is only increasing, storage capabilities are no longer a concern and the days of standard definition and heavily compressed codecs are going to go the way of dial-up and cassette tapes. Over the course of the next year we're not going to be talking about 1/3" or 1/2" or 2/3" cameras: we're going to have to learn all new terminology. Thankfully, a very nice chap named Tyler created a web page with some very handy explanations of all the different options that we have to look forward to. The downside of having all these options suddenly opening up to us is that there is going to be some of the loud and bitter debate that I originally mentioned in this post: snide comments regarding sensor sizes, aliasing, compression artifacts and rolling shutters are going to be quite commonplace.

But, given the choice, I'd rather be part of a loud conversation than sitting in silence. This is going to be exciting.

Chris Cardno
Visual Edge