Yes.
And No.

Still photography (as opposed to motion video) is still a little trickier than just dealing with pixels and resolution.

Frame rate – or shutter speed – is still the greatest obstacle. So, yes, you could theoretically film someone in HD for a while and then print out a frame… you’d be hard pressed, however, to find a frame that wasn’t blurry. Video relies heavilly on Persistence of Vision. Still photography relies heavilly on light entering the lens – both are competing for shutter speed/frame rate/ aperture.

When i was crash testing seats for airplanes, we used a 10,000 FPS video camera. We were able to get any frame we wanted in crystal clarity. Needless to say, that technology doesn’t hit the mainstream market.

Anyway, I tend to believe that artists will use whatever tool they feel best conveys the results they want. So, while the casual photographer may be fine pulling double duty from a video camera… the serious photographer would probably choose his tools differntly.

Just my 2 cents!

Assume 10 years down the line we’re talking about at least 20-MP still/video cameras (at which point we’ll be well beyond the quality-level of the best 35mm camera film today). A 20-MP camera would generate an uncompressed full-size still image of roughly 60 MB in size.

It’s safe to assume by then we’ll have standardized HD video transmissions across the board at 60fps or higher (since some HD video parameters already are).

If my math is right, that creates an uncompressed video file at the rate of 3.6 GB per second (60 MB per frame times 60 frames per second), or a terabyte in less than 5 minutes. Even assuming a lossless codec compresses things 50%, that’s still a large chunk of disk. While the consumer market would definitely get JPEG-like compression, professionals are not going to work on anything that isn’t uncompressed or lossless.

Perpendicular disk technologies will help reduce that impact, but we will need another leap in storage technology to keep pace. Current disk capacities are already straining against the requirements of HDTV. They’re also going to have to be a lot faster to write data at 20-MP video rates.

I won’t say it’s impossible, of course. The first hard drives were 5 MB, weighed more than a car, and were hauled out of cargo planes with forklifts. Now I can carry 4 GB of no moving parts on a keychain.