TL;DR
- There are three ways to get photos from a video day: frame grabs from the footage, stills taken alongside the video, or a separate photo slot. They cost different things, and only the first costs nothing on the day.
- A 4K frame is about 8.3 million pixels; a 1080p frame about 2.1 million. Plenty for screens. For print, the arithmetic and motion blur decide it, not the camera's reputation.
- Stills taken on a video day don't need their own setup, but they do take minutes inside each setup — and posed portraits stop the schedule while everyone waits.
- If photos are the main thing you need — a catalogue, a print campaign, a cover — book a photographer's own day. Squeezing it into a video day costs both jobs.
The annual report needs portraits of the management team. The website needs new photos of the factory floor. And the company video is already booked for the fourteenth. Somewhere in the planning meeting someone says the obvious thing: the crew and the lights will be there anyway — can't we get the photos on the same day?
Usually, yes. But "the crew will be there anyway" is the part that isn't quite true. The crew will be there, busy. Photos on a video day aren't free; they're paid for in time, and the time comes out of the same day as the film.
How can you get photos from a video shoot day?
Three ways. They are not three price points for the same thing — they produce different photos and cost different things.
| Route | What you end up with | What it costs on the day | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frame grabs from the footage | Stills pulled out of the video afterwards | Nothing | Size, motion blur, and framing that was chosen for a moving picture |
| Stills taken alongside the video | Real photographs, taken in the same setups the video uses | Minutes inside each setup, and a person to take them | The light was built for the video, and the photographer gets the second-best position |
| A separate photo slot or day | Photos with their own lighting, position and time | Its own setup — or its own day | It's a second job, and it's priced like one |
Most of the choice comes down to one question: will any of these photos be printed, or used large? If not, the first route may be all you need.
Are frame grabs from a video good enough to use as photos?
For screens, often yes. For print, it depends on size, and the arithmetic is easy to do yourself.
YouTube's own resolution table puts 2160p ("4K") at 3840 × 2160 pixels and 1080p at 1920 × 1080. Multiply those out and a single 4K frame is about 8.3 million pixels; a 1080p frame about 2.1 million.
On a screen, a frame from 4K footage is plenty for a social post, a web page or a slide. A frame from 1080p footage is fine for small uses and starts to look soft once it's stretched across a full-width banner.
In print, pixels become centimetres. If your printer asks for around 300 pixels per inch — ask them; the number varies by job — a 4K frame prints at roughly 32 × 18 cm, and a 1080p frame at roughly 16 × 9 cm. That can carry an image inside an annual report page. It won't carry the cover.
Orientation catches people out. Video frames are landscape. Crop a 4K frame to a 3:4 portrait and you keep 1,620 of its 3,840 pixels of width — less than half the frame, and less than half the pixels.
Blur is usually the bigger problem, not pixel count. Video is shot with a shutter slow enough that movement smears slightly from frame to frame; that smear is what makes motion look smooth when it plays. Pause on a moment where someone is gesturing or mid-sentence, and the hand or the mouth is soft. A photographer shoots a much faster shutter to freeze exactly that moment. So the frames that grab well are the still ones — a person listening, a machine at rest, a wide of the room — and the frames with the most energy are the ones that grab worst.
The practical upside: frame grabs cost nothing on the day, and on our projects the raw footage is handed over once the project closes, so you can go back and pull more whenever you need them.
What does adding stills do to a video shoot day?
A shoot day is a budget of setups, not hours of filming. Our own numbers are in how many videos one shoot day can produce: a day runs about twelve hours, three to four setups fit inside it, and every change of setup costs half an hour to an hour. Photos taken alongside the video don't need a new setup — they borrow the one that's already lit. What they cost is smaller, and easier to miss.
Position. At any moment there is one best place for the camera to stand. The video camera has it. The photographer takes the second-best angle, or waits for a pause and asks for thirty seconds.
Light. The lighting in a setup is shaped for the video: continuous, and built around how the camera moves through the scene. Light that flatters a slow camera move isn't always the light you would choose for a portrait. Sometimes it's close enough. Sometimes a small adjustment for the photo means readjusting it back for the next take.
Sound. A camera shutter clicking during an interview take ends up on the audio. Stills during takes either happen silently or wait for the gaps between them.
Posed photos stop the day. Candid stills — people working, a meeting in progress, the production line running — happen inside the video's time. Posed ones don't. A management portrait means the video pauses while one person is placed, lit and directed. Five minutes each across eight directors is the better part of an hour, which on a twelve-hour day is roughly the cost of another re-light.
None of this makes same-day photos a bad idea. It makes them a line in the plan rather than a favour on the day. The version that goes wrong is the one raised at lunchtime, after the day has already been planned shot by shot.
Will the video crew take the photos too?
We take photos only as part of a video shoot. We don't take photography-only jobs, so if your project is photos alone, we're not the right studio — the next section is about who is. What that means in practice is that photos always follow the video: they're planned into the same day, around the same setups.
The photos are taken by our own photographer, working inside the video's setups — using the light that is already built and the pauses between takes. That is why the costs in the section above apply: they are the price of sharing a day, not of adding one.
What comes back is a retouched selection, delivered together with the film rather than as a separate job.
On the quote, stills sit on their own line, apart from the video. You can see exactly what adding them costs, and remove the line if you decide frame grabs are enough. The simplest moment to raise it is when you ask for the quote, so the day is planned with the photos in it from the start.
When should you book a photographer separately instead?
When the photos are the job, not the extra. Specifically:
- The photos are the main deliverable. A product catalogue, a print campaign, an annual report whose cover matters more than the film. Photos that carry the whole piece deserve a day built around them.
- Every photo needs its own controlled setup. Product stills against a clean background, dozens of SKUs, each one lit for itself. A video day holds three or four setups; it can't absorb fifty.
- The photos need a place or a time the video doesn't go. A different location, a different day's light, a season.
- You need the photos weeks before the film. A launch announcement that goes out ahead of the video shouldn't wait for a video schedule.
In those cases a photographer's own day, with their own lighting plan, usually gets you better photos than a video day can — and gives the film its hours back. Say so early, and plan them as two jobs.
What should you decide before asking for a quote?
Five answers change the plan more than anything else. Bring them to the first conversation and the photos can be scheduled instead of squeezed.
| Decide | Why it changes the plan |
|---|---|
| Screen, print, or both? | Screen-only use can often be met with frame grabs. Print usually needs stills taken as photographs. |
| The largest size any photo will be used at | Decides whether a 4K frame clears it. Work it out with your printer's number, not by eye. |
| Candid or posed? | Candid stills fit inside setups. Posed portraits stop the schedule, person by person. |
| How many people, and who | Posed photos are counted in minutes per person. Eight directors is a different day from two. |
| Landscape or portrait? | A portrait crop keeps less than half a video frame. If most uses are portrait, frame grabs are the wrong route. |
If the answers point to video with photos alongside, our corporate video production page is the place to start the conversation. If they point to photos first, you'll get a better result from a photographer's own day.
What this page can't settle
It can't tell you what that line on the quote will say for your project — ask for it alongside the video quote. What it can tell you is that the time photos take out of the schedule is real, and the same levers that move any production budget apply to it too.
It also can't promise that photos taken on a video day match a day built for photos. Sometimes they come close. When the photos are what matters most, it's more honest to plan for the day they deserve.
Thinking about a project like this?
Tell us what it needs to do — we'll take it from there.
Frequently asked questions
- Can we use frame grabs from our video as photos?
- Yes, for many uses. A frame from 4K footage is about 8.3 million pixels, which is enough for social posts, web pages and slides. The limits are print size, orientation (video frames are landscape) and motion blur: video is shot with a shutter slow enough that movement smears slightly, so hands and mouths caught mid-movement often come out soft.
- Is a 4K frame grab good enough to print?
- For small printed images, often. If your printer asks for around 300 pixels per inch, a 3840 × 2160 frame prints at roughly 32 × 18 cm, and a 1080p frame at roughly 16 × 9 cm. That can work for an image inside an annual report page. It won't cover an A4 cover or a banner. Ask your printer what density they need before you rely on grabs.
- Does taking photos slow down a video shoot?
- Candid stills taken inside setups that are already lit cost a few minutes each time. Posed photos — management portraits, a group shot — stop the video schedule while everyone waits, and a few minutes per person adds up across a day that usually holds only three or four setups. Tell the studio before the day is planned, not on the day.
- Does LMTDS do photography-only shoots?
- No. We take photos only as part of a video shoot day. If your project is photos only, a dedicated photographer is the better fit.
Keep reading
- How Many Videos Can You Get From One Shoot Day?A single day can genuinely feed months of content — or produce one film and a pile of unusable offcuts. The difference is decided before the day, and it's physical, not clever.
- Going Direct or Through Your Agency: Which Actually Costs You Less?Going direct looks cheaper on the quote and often is, but the agency was also doing work nobody wrote down. Here's what each route really buys, the line we use to tell which one a project needs, and what usually goes wrong when you go direct.
- When the Honest Answer Is "Don't Shoot Yet"A video is a multiplier, and a multiplier applied to something unfinished just makes the unfinished part louder. Three situations where the money is better spent elsewhere first, what to spend it on instead, and the cases where shooting before you're ready is genuinely the right call.