Rich wrote:

If video does replace still cameras for still photography, I wonder which
branch of still photography will be the last to succomb? Possibly it will
be high resolution landscape work that will be the last to see the use of
still image cameras. It's also possible that a resurgence of film, perhaps
black and white, will do something to ensure the life of still photography.

I doubt that video will replace still camera's. There are overlapping goals
between video and still camera. Both can tell a story, but still camera's
capture the emotion of an instant videos the emotion events separated
in time.

Film is a media that can now essentially replaced now by digital media.
For a couple generations film was the media used by photographers
because it was the only thing available that could inexpensively store
that much information.

Dark room skills have been replaced by programming skills. My old
college physics teacher was a master in the darkroom, watching him
print an image was ballet of real-time editing as the paper was being
exposed, waving his hands (literally) playing with contrast and exposure.

If he were still alive he would embrace the digital still camera.

which branch of still photography will be the last to succomb?

Perhaps landscape but I think that it will not happen. Already
we can display a landscape and zoom into the image revealing
ever so much more detail. A few folks have posted billion pixel
images. What will landscape photos and macro images be like when
a digital camera starts taking billion pixel images with a dynamic range
+/- 4 stops over the current images.

It is not so much of what we have lost but how much we will
gain with the new technologies

w..