I love stacking cucolorii (plural of “cucoloris”) and I thought it was time to write an article about how this technique works and why I like it so much. I was a bit stretched for ideas that would illustrate this concept… and then an eclipse happened. Why that made a difference is a very interesting story…

When Adam Wilt and I shot “Fire and Ice” together on a prototype FS700 we had no idea that it would be shown at NAB… and that it would be hit. We wanted to do more, so we pitched Sony a commercial concept for a local company that involved high speed “veggie baseball.” Guess what: they sent us an FS700 again. Edible baseball never looked so good.

I remember very little math from my high school days, but what I do remember are the tricks that I was able to apply to my daily life. One formula, determining ratios, has served me better than any other. Here’s how I’m using this formula to create custom frame lines for an upcoming web banner shoot.

After years of wondering what exactly the user matrix does I think I’ve figured it out. I’m not sure I can explain it, but I’m going to try. Put on your propellor hat and rub your brain with soothing salves, ‘cause it’s gonna hurt…

Adam Wilt gets to play with the best toys, in this case a prototype Sony FS700 slow motion camera. He invited me over to play, and the results were really, really interesting. Adam’s article talks about some of the technical issues he ran across, so in this article I’m going to focus on the lighting side of what we did.

Color comparison tests are hard. Color science is witchcraft, and objective color is exceedingly difficult to quantify. Comparison is really the only way to judge color, so we tested ten LED lights against two tungsten Tweenies and a 3200K 2’x4 Kino Flo. The results are… interesting.

When production companies ask me to shoot spots on the Canon 5D MkII I don’t flinch anymore. Sure, it’s not the most user friendly camera in the world, but I can’t complain about the images I can make with it. And no one else does, either.

In this case, half the battle was putting the camera in the right place at the right time—and quickly. It was the perfect camera for a small, fast-moving project.

“LED Light Shootout” sounds so dramatic, as if a collection of motley illuminants met in a dusty western town to settle their differences with bullets instead of marketing. It’s actually tedious, mind numbing work… and a real eyeopener.

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.

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.

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.)

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…

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.

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.

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.)

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.

It’s one thing to understand that soft sources make soft shadows. It’s another thing to understand why. Fortunately a friend from the insect world can help us if we will look at soft light through his eyes.

In a previous article I described how to place a hard key light. In this article I’ll look at why soft sources are a bit more realistic in color cinematography, require less precise placement, and can help define the volume of a space.

Here’s the deal: there’s this thing called “pulse width modulation,” and under certain conditions it doesn’t play well with rolling shutter cameras. Most of the time it’s no problem, but we don’t get phone calls from post when there’s no problem. Here’s how to avoid that phone call.

The most important thing you will ever learn about lighting is this: LIGHTING IS NOT A FORMULA. Learning about lighting, though, is a process of becoming aware, and in this first of many articles I’m going I’m going to try to increase your awareness of one specific thing per article. The more awareness you have the more easily you’ll be able to adapt your lighting to your circumstances because you’ll see, with your own eyes, what you need to do to make an image that satisfies your inner artist.

I think the best place to start is with classical key light placement. This knowledge is not something you will use verbatim as this is not a style that is in vogue at the moment. The underlying principles, however, should be of daily benefit.

For a long time my primary source of employment was shooting corporate marketing communications videos. As these consist primarily of “talking head” interviews, I tried every lighting setup I could think of to make people look their best quickly, as many of these shoots have tight schedules and not much turnaround time between interviews. This setup is the result of years of experimentation.

Technology is always advancing, and we’re at the point in this industry where we’ll always have new toys on the near horizon. My question is: how much do these toys matter when it’s the people who use them who provide all the creativity?

The day I stop learning about lighting will be the day my EKG goes flatline. There’s an extraordinary amount to learn and absorb, and I doubt I’ll ever learn all of it. That’s okay, because it means I’ll never run out of new things to learn. My most recent fixation is on the one light many think about the least: the fill light.

One of the best things about this business is that greatness lurks around every corner. If you are resourceful and creative you’ll find it well enough.

Izzy Hyman, of the website Izzy Video, interviewed me yesterday for his “Meet the Shooter” series.

Over time I’ve come to respect the Canon 5D. It’s not the most user friendly of cameras, and it has some fairly serious faults, but if you can avoid the pitfalls it can make very pretty images.

It wasn’t until I worked at the DSC Labs booth at NAB that I discovered The Hawk… and it blew me away. It’s a very simple chart, but it offers a colorist (professional or amateur) the most critical information necessary to accurately neutralize your raw, log, or even WYSIWYG images.

Originally slated to be a web-only spot, the first shoot day went so well that when the client saw the results they ordered a second shoot day, added an actor and made a $1m+ national ad buy.