Try our new AI powered Smart-Search!
There are two components of gamma that have quite different purposes. One of them is always necessary because displays and their surroundings are never equally as bright as the original scene. The other one is a compression technique.
_DD_460_291_70.jpg)
Steeven Petitteville’s background in cinematography begins with the sort of story that many people would like to be able to tell. Petitteville didn’t finish studying at the ESRA film school in Paris, having become too busy working in the camera department to do so. After ten years as a camera assistant, he arrived in Los Angeles to shoot a commercial. Seven years later, he’s still there.
There are a number of reasons why people like old lenses, and they’re all very valid. Cameras and lenses so good they’re invisible are a recent development. Most of the best films ever made, by default, predate today’s spotless pictures, and artists have always been a rebellious bunch in any case. This, though, is an article about why it’s not always a good idea to rebel, at least without knowing exactly what we’re getting ourselves into.
Lets’ start by stating the obvious: TV reporters are not trained lighting designers. When the pandemic hit, stations were forced to figure out new ways of socially distanced, on-air reporting, and initially asked reporters to pick a well-lit room in their house and place a lamp behind the camera to illuminate their face.
Planning the cinematography of a production which is quite literally about darkness is a challenge. Shooting a documentary with a skeleton crew in a place where power cuts are every day is an even bigger challenge. Director of photography Miguel Angel Viñas faced all that and more on The Road Bad and the Place Dark, a documentary shot in Sierra Leone for medical charity Médecins du Monde.
Engineers and production crews help local TV stations maintain distancing and a sunny on-air personality.
The image of a director crouching to line up a shot with an optical viewfinder is one that’s been pushed aside somewhat by the less romantic modern image of a director squinting at an LCD monitor. The monitors have a lot to recommend them – in an ideal world, they can show color, exposure, and contrast in a way that’s close to how the final production will appear, for some value of “close.” It’s enough to make us forget that the cameras of decades past – film cameras – didn’t even need batteries to make a picture that has lots of extra look-around room, miles of resolution, no rolling shutter, a completely accurate depiction of lens flare and depth of field. And, of course, no issues handling all the dynamic range and color of the real world.
People are not just flocking to beaches and holiday resorts as lockdowns are eased but also to their TV screens for viewing of returning live sports.