Friday, March 30, 2012
Cameras used to be SOOOO boring. Now every new camera is a mystery to be unfolded: What does it do well? What tweaks can make it better? Here is my first C300 article that addresses these questions…
I’ve shot a lot of web and broadcast spots on the Canon 5D and while it makes pretty pictures the controls are very limited. It’s also not a camera that can be used quickly. At the moment the Canon C300 is a bit of a mystery to me: before my recent tests I didn’t know whether it’s a 5D with more controls and a cinematographer-friendly form factor or if it’s something more. My initial conclusion: it’s more. A lot more. In my next few articles I’m going to take a peek inside the machinery and see what I can find. With the help of charts from DSC Labs I hope to shed some light on the inner workings of the C300 and try to figure out what its niche is.
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Wednesday, March 28, 2012
It used to be so simple: pick a film stock, pick a lens, shoot images, process and print, repeat. It wasn’t rocket science. Now, though… it’s rocket science.
Not so long ago the toughest choice we had to make was which film stock to use. It was possible to learn one or two stocks really, really well and use them predictably over the course of many years. Now a game-changing camera comes out every year, introducing us to new strengths and weakness. Not so long ago cinematography wasn’t rocket science. Now… it is.
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Monday, March 26, 2012
“Just for the web” is no reason to skimp on a project’s look. A few simple tricks made this web spot shine.
A web spot may be seen by more people than a broadcast spot, so making it pretty is more important than ever. In this case, simple but elegant lighting and custom gamma curves made this spot shine. (And when shooting kids, “simple” becomes very important.)
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
OLED monitors are about to change the way we view images, both at work and at home. Prepare to look better than you ever have before.
The first time I laid eyes on a professional Sony OLED monitor I knew my professional life had changed. In a few years I’m sure we’ll take this technology for granted, but right now it looks AMAZING compared to any other monitoring system I use on a regular basis. For a slightly-technical-but-mostly-educational look at why, read on…
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
Lighting a bounce card is easy, right? Right… IF you know the basics. Here they are.
Is bounce light really just about aiming a light at a white card and walking away? No. There are a couple of tricks to getting the most out of your bounce source, and I can show them to you fairly quickly using a 4’x4’ bounce card as an example.
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Sometimes all it takes to make a beautiful picture is placing one light—as long as it’s the proper light source. This still photo shows an example of one style of soft lighting that’s been in use for centuries, and for good reason: it works.
There are few things more elegant than lighting a shot with a single light source. It doesn’t always work, but when it does—it’s magical.
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Friday, January 20, 2012
The best books about cinematography aren’t necessarily about the art of cinematography. They’re about getting all the other stuff out of the way so you can practice cinematography. This is the book that tells you what you didn’t know—but need to know—about becoming a cinematographer.
This book is not for everyone. If you don’t eat, breathe and live cinematography… maybe you should read something else. Seriously. This book may not be for you. (But if it is… you’d better not miss it.)
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Placing a fill light properly is possibly more important than placing a key light… and I can prove it!
In this article I wrote about classical key light placement and classical portraiture to illustrate how artists and cinematographers have traditionally gone about lighting faces. Fill light is often derided as the light that simply opens up the shadows, but it can do much more than that. It can have a shape and beauty all its own, and it can save you when your key light placement is not optimal.
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