A frame grabber ties it all together. A significant advantage of video frame grabbing over conventional photographic methods of image acquisition is realized by eliminating the time and money spent in developing film, printing and then scanning. With video frame grabbing techniques the image file is generated directly from the video source. In studio environments, this allows for making very quick adjustments to video camera position, focus, lighting, subject orientation, background, etc. if the captured image indicates the need for such corrections. At least video tape, unlike film, is reusable.
Video tape offers an extremely cheap medium for storing images.
If a single frame of composite video is captured as an uncompressed 640x480x24-bit color image file it will occupy 900,000 bytes or so. But then again, you'd have to hook up about 400 of those 2.5 gigabyte drives to store the terabyte of images you can store and retrieve with your VCR or camcorder, an inexpensive frame grabber and a handful of video tapes. The video output from a now antique Sony CCD-TR5 NTSC 8mm camcorder was used as a signal source to feed the frame grabber. A tripod for the camcorder quickly proved to be a useful accessory. An indispensable feature of this camcorder for shooting rocks was it's macro lens, which provided the ability to shoot very close-up to the subject.