Director of photography Art Adams knew he wanted to look through cameras for a living at the age of 12. After ten years in Hollywood working on feature films, TV series, commercials, music videos, visual effects and docs he returned to his native San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently shoots commercials and high-end corporate marketing and branding projects. When Art isn’t shooting he consults on product design and marketing for a number of motion picture equipment manufacturers. His clients have included Sony, Arri, Canon, Tiffen, Schneider Optics, PRG, Cineo Lighting, Element Labs, Sound Devices and DSC Labs. His writing has appeared in HD Video Pro, American Cinematographer, Australian Cinematographer, Camera Operator Magazine and ProVideo Coalition. He is a current member of the International Cinematographers Guild, and a past active member of the SOC and SMPTE.
A gaffer once called me a “picky lighter.” I take pride in that designation, but I also take pride in working fast. Here’s a new soft light trick I’ve been thinking about. I have one goal when it comes to lighting: do great work fast. I’m also a sucker for soft light. I can’t get enough of it. I love contrast,…
Do sensors have a native color balance? What does that even mean? I’ve got a theory… read on! When the original RED One M camera was released, RED stated that the native color balance of the sensor was 5000K. At the time it had never occurred to me that sensors had native color balances. I knew that older prism cameras…
Monitors can be contentious things on set. Here’s how I make them work for me, rather than the other way around. Toward the end of my career as an assistant, I worked on a TV series with Brianne Murphy, ASC. She made her career solely by being fast and dependable. She always delivered, on time and on budget. She also…
Monitors can be contentious things on set. Here’s how I make them work for me, rather than the other way around. Toward the end of my career as an assistant, I worked on a TV series with Brianne Murphy, ASC. She made her career solely by being fast and dependable. She always delivered, on time and on budget. She also…
Recently I shot some comparison tests between Sony’s older SGamut color space and their brand new one, SGamut3.cine. For several years I’ve been fascinated by camera color rendition. Every camera manufacturer, just like every film manufacturer, has their own look—their own way of interpreting and rendering color and contrast—that defines them and their products. I’ve spent a lot of time…
Log and raw are not the same thing, and they are good for different things. Here’s how I differentiate the two… The first thing we need to do is define one against the other. Raw and log are occasionally used interchangeably, and some raw formats incorporate log, so it’s important to be clear about what we’re discussing: Raw records data…
Color is something that has fascinated me for a long time.This is what I’ve noticed about trends in cameras over the years. When I started out in this business as a camera assistant every film stock had a signature. Companies had overall looks — Kodak was the “warm” company, Fuji was the “cool” company, etc. — but each stock had…
I recently saw a protoype Arri Amira for the first time. I really, really like most of what I saw, but some of it needs a rethink. I know the gang at Chater Camera exceptionally well, and in spite of that they invited me to their Arri Amira open house on February 12th in Berkeley. Last year I participated in…
How do you make a light look soft yet cut it as if it were hard? By using a light that’s both hard and soft at the same time, of course. A director recently sent me a reference image and told me, “I want the studio portions of our music video to look like this.” The image showed a woman…
The butterflies that I stop and look at are usually very large and made of grid cloth. Here’s what I use overhead in daylight exteriors, and when. Making actors look good outdoors can be really difficult. When possible I try to schedule outdoor shoots for morning or afternoon so as to avoid mid-day “raccoon eyes” that make actors look… well,…