2022 was a quiet year for camera technology, thank goodness. The decade plus I’ve been covering camera breakthroughs on this website has been a rocket ride. So much velocity, so little time to stop, catch one’s breath, smell some roses. Ask yourself, who can any longer tell the difference between film and digital origination on the big screen? Be honest. No less than Roger Deakins declared film a dead issue half a dozen years ago. His latest, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, shot using Arri Alexa Mini LF (large format) and spherical Arri Signature Primes, is a loving paean to […]

Facebook introduced Surround 360, a high-end video camera, today at F8, the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. In reality, Facebook unveiled a reference design for the VR video camera, which it plans to release as an open-source project on GitHub this summer. In other words, Facebook will not be producing the camera. Instead, Facebook is open-sourcing the camera in order to encourage developers to take the design and create their own version of the camera. “In designing this camera, we wanted to create a professional-grade end-to-end system that would capture, edit, and render high-quality 3D-360 video. In doing so, we hoped to meaningfully […]

Eventually we’ll stop posting about Under The Skin but today is not that day. Last month, I ran a featurette from A24 about the film’s guerrilla style execution. The production rigged Johansson’s vehicle with eight hidden cameras, recording her improvised interactions with any given passerby in real time and with maximum coverage. Now, we have yet another featurette that gets into the specifications of said cameras, called “One-Cams,” which were developed especially for the occasion. For the van sequences, the VFX studio One of Us rigged a CCD camera (about the size of a GoPro) with anamorphic super 16 lenses. Though the rest of the […]

There were two big camera announcements at NAB yesterday. First up AJA is entering the camera market with CION. This is a 4K camera with global shutter that has the ergonomics and connections of a more traditional camera. It’s priced at just under $9000 for the body and a power adapter. However there’s some things to keep in mind. It’s PL mount only so the lens options will be pricier. It also only takes AJA PAk Drives which run about $700 for 256 GB and $1300 for 512 GB, so media will  not be cheap. And you’ll need to get […]

Setlife Magazine has generously compiled the technical specifications of the films nominated for the Cinematography, Directing and Best Picture Oscars, and let’s just say ARRI shows up more than once. All of the Cinematography nominees were photographed on an ARRI (3 Alexas versus 2 Arricams), with a mix of Panavision, Zeiss, Cooke and Angenieux lenses. Also noted were the films’ negatives and prints, which bandied back and forth between Kodak and Fuji. Only her (C300) and The Wolf of Wall Street (EOS C500) opted for Canon, in addition to their arsenal of Alexas and Arricams. Notably absent is any sign of Red. […]

Today, Blackmagic Design announced the release of the first and long-awaited software update for their Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. The 1.5 upgrade adds a 12-bit Log CinemaDNG RAW recording file so users can capture extensive dynamic range — the brightest highlights and darkest shadows — in a single file. The new addition will allow for lossless quality when images are decompressed, and greater flexibility in the color grading process. Further, users can begin editing or color correcting directly from an SD card, which will facilitate the post-production workload. A nice function for a camera that runs under $1000. The Blackmagic […]

Many pundits predicted a serious shakeup when Blackmagic announced their new Pocket Cinema Camera back at NAB in April. Priced at just $995, the Super 16 handheld, complete with 13 stops of dynamic range, seem poised to encroach upon DSLR’s steadfast popularity. As the camera underwent initial shipments in August, homegrown test footage began popping up here and there. Dan Chung, co-editor of News Shooter, recently took his BMPCC out for a spin in the Sanlitun area of Beijing — at night. The experiment yielded mixed results. Armed with a Voigtlander 17.5 mm f0.95 lens to maximize light on the […]

As an undergrad at NYU, Timur Civan studied sculpture before moving into video. “I became really interested in video because I was able to bring time into my sculptural work,” he says. Civan has produced a wide variety of work, from short films, music videos, and corporate videos, to commercials and documentaries. He recently DP’d Vincent Laforet’s intro for the M?VI digital 3-axis gyro-stabilized camera gimbal. He has an affinity for experimenting with unusual gear, and finding new in-camera effects. Civan spoke to us briefly at a recent presentation he gave at Rule Boston Camera: Filmmaker: How did you first get […]

Ben Pender-Cudlip is a Boston-based documentary filmmaker who recently switched from shooting with a DSLR to the Canon C100. His first project shot on the C100 was a short that included a segment on ice climbing. In this second part of our interview with him about switching to the C100, Pender-Cudlip talks about the project and what it was like to use the camera in these conditions. Filmmaker: How did this project come about? Pender-Cudlip: It’s a film for a woman named Lauren Schaad. She approached me about shooting a TV pilot. She was looking to get into reality TV […]

Ben Pender-Cudlip is a Boston based filmmaker who specializes in nonfiction work. His short film Sanjiban, which chronicles the passing of filmmaker Sanjiban Sellew, premiered at Hot Docs last year. Ben recently switched from shooting on a DSLR to the Canon C100. In part one of this interview he talks about his experience switching to the C100, and in part two he talks about the first major project shot with the camera: documenting an ice-climbing expedition. Filmmaker: What were you using prior to getting the C100? Pender-Cudlip: Before the C100 I was using a Canon 60D, which is sort of […]

Cinematographer David Kruta spent a week in Indonesia this February shooting footage for the SurfAid charity to use in their promotional and educational campaigns. He took with him a RED EPIC, and says that the goal was to “bring a cinematic approach” to something that would be more often shot in a documentary style. Filmmaker: How did the project come about? Kruta: The director, Michael Lawrence, is a good friend of mine and I’ve done five or six projects with him. He said he had a shoot in Indonesia, and that he was going there to revisit the places he photographed after […]

Kristyn Ulanday and Max Esposito graduated from the journalism department of Boston University in 2010. They both work commercially as freelance photographers and filmmakers, but in 2011 they also began a collaborative project called Full Frame America to tell the stories they wanted to tell. The first result of that collaboration is a 24-minute documentary, The Druid City, that focuses on the town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and how the residents have coped after the town was hit by an EF4 tornado in April 2011.   Filmmaker: How did you come to make this movie? Esposito: We both felt like we […]

Back in February, I had the privilege of giving two workshops, “Intro to Large-sensor Digital Cinema Cameras” and “Large-sensor Digital Cinema Cameras in Detail” at the 11th edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus. For those not acquainted with this Berlin Film Festival initiative: the Talent Campus each year invites 300 directors, producers, editors, and cinematographers – “talented emerging filmmakers in the first years of their career” – each with a film or two under their belts. Most seem to be in their late 20s. This year over 4,400 applied from 137 countries. Clearly a hot ticket. The 300 lucky ones […]

The problem with the Oscars is that you spend three hours watching the show and at the end you haven’t learned anything from the winners about how they did what they did. In celebration of the event, and with congratulations to the winners, here’s some interviews with the nominees for Best Cinematography. One of the interesting themes you’ll note in these articles is that the switch from film to digital remains a hot topic: Anna Karenina | Seamus McGarvey “Anna Karenina was filmed with anamorphic lenses, which require slightly more light, and some of the lighting used is older in style, […]

The day Sundance began, Daily Variety’s lead article kicked off with: “In this brave new indie world of VOD, shifting release windows, RED cameras [italics mine] and social media marketing…” I was struck by how little any of this has to do with indie filmmaking alone. As a token of digital revolution, RED cameras are so five years ago. It’s hard to storm the ramparts when last year’s #5 and #7 box office hits were shot with RED Epics (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Amazing Spider-Man). In fact, not only were last year’s #1 and #4 hits filmed with […]

When L.A.-based director Rich Landes was offered the chance to shoot a short narrative piece for Canon he jumped at the chance. Landes has extensive experience as a commercial director, but this was a chance to direct a narrative based on his own idea, and with few restrictions from the “client.” But first he had to come up with an idea and treatment in two days. Then he had to fly to New York and cast, find locations, and hire a DP in four days, and then shoot the whole thing over the course of two days. None of this […]

Recently we published an interview about the making of the short film Pulse, which was financed by Canon and shot on their new C100. Canon subsequently contacted us about a second short, BART, which was also shot on the C100. While Pulse is a documentary piece, BART is a four-minute short that is entirely an exercise in narrative story telling. Canon was specifically looking for a film that had little language and had a lot of visuals to it. BART will premiere next week at a special screening and workshop at the Sundance Film Festival, but today Canon is releasing […]

When 3D TVs were the rage, I was convinced it was just a cynical push by the electronics manufacturers to sell TVs and nothing else. To me, 3D was a fad that would be used for a few things, but was unlikely to become mainstream. I’d seen the future before; I saw Jaws 3D when it was first released. So when the manufacturers started talking up 4K cameras, with promises of 4K TV sets, I was convinced that this too was a push to sell new TV sets that wouldn’t amount to much. Sure filmmakers with a big budget will […]