Cinematography Archives

CN-E

What Is A Canon CN-E Lens? When Canon launched the Cinema EOS camera line for professional video applications, they needed a lens lineup to compliment the cameras. Cinema lens are designed quite differently to stills camera lenses, so the Canon CN-E lens lineup was born to cater to that market. Canon’s CN-E prime lenses are available with an EF mount, whilst the CN-E zoom lenses are available in either EF or PL mount. The biggest visual difference between EF and CN-E lenses, is that the cinema lenses have gearing around them that allows the focus and aperture to be easily …

Film Plane Indicator

What is a Film Plane Indicator? The Film Plane Indicator is a small symbol on your camera that looks like a circle with a line drawn through it. If you were to cut your camera in half, exactly in line with the line through the circle, you would see that it cuts right through at the front of your camera’s sensor. Obviously the naming is a leftover from the days of film, and sometimes you’ll hear it called the Sensor Plane Indicator these days, or the Focal Plane Indicator. Why do you need to know where the front of your …

Focal Plane Indicator

See Film Plane Indicator

Focus Breathing

What Is Focus Breathing? Focus breathing is term that is used to describe the small change in focal length of a lens that occurs as the focus is adjusted from infinity to MFD, or vice versa. If you look through the viewfinder of your camera and rotate the lens’ focus ring from one extremity to the other, you will see that the lens appears to zoom in or out very slightly. This change is called focus breathing. For still photography, focus breathing won’t make any difference at all. Even the most expensive professional grade lenses exhibit focus breathing, and it …

Focus Puller

What Is A Focus Puller? A focus puller is someone who works alongside the camera operator on video productions to control the focus of a camera’s lens. Cine lenses for the types of cameras that are often used on major motion pictures and TV commercials, do not have autofocus lenses. Instead, the lens is manually focussed during the recording. The focus puller’s job is to carefully watch the take and adjust the focus smoothly as the subject moves around the scene. Focus marks are often set with sticky tape, on the floor of the set. The distance of the camera …

Follow Focus

What Is A Follow Focus? Autofocus is rarely used in professional film making because the focus mechanisms are not smooth enough to be adjusted while the camera is rolling. Instead, the focus ring on the lens is rotated manually using a geared hand controller called a follow focus. Sometimes the follow focus is turned by the camera operator and sometimes there is a dedicated member of the camera crew called a focus puller. All cine lenses are manual focus only, designed to be operated smoothly with a follow focus and they have teeth around the focus ring that mesh with …

Interlaced

What Does Interlaced Mean When Talking About Capturing Videos? When talking about cameras, and specifically recording movies and video, the term ‘interlaced’ refers to a method of capturing moving pictures by splitting an image into two ‘fields’. The odd lines of image sites on the sensors surface are captured first, followed by the even lines. The two fields are then played back as individual frames. Recording interlaced video allows for a reduction in the overall bandwidth required as each frame only contains the information from one field, or half the total image. Interlaced video was widely used in recording for …

Interlaced Scan

What Does Interlaced-Scan Mean When Talking About Capturing Videos? When talking about cameras, and specifically recording movies and video, the term ‘interlaced-scan’ refers to a method of capturing moving pictures by splitting an image into two ‘fields’. The odd lines of image sites on the sensors surface are captured first, followed by the even lines. The two fields are then played back as individual frames. Recording interlaced video allows for a reduction in the overall bandwidth required as each frame only contains the information from one field, or half the total image. Interlaced video was widely used in recording for …

Intervalometer

What Is an Intervalometer and How Is It Used When Taking Photos? When talking about photography an ‘intervalometer’ also simply known as a ‘timer’ is a device which is used to automatically operate a camera’s shutter at specifically measured intervals of time. Intervalometers are widely employed in time-lapse photography where they are used to record a series of images at specific intervals over a period of time which are joined together in post processing to create a moving picture. Most intervalometers can be attached to a cameras micro-usb port (although some older cameras use proprietary connections) and allow automated capturing …

Mic (microphone)

What Is a Mic and How Is It Used When Capturing Digital Video? A Mic, or Microphone is a device designed to capture and convert sound into a digital signal so that it can be recorded to a storage medium. A digital camera which is able to record audio must have built-in mic in order to do so, built-in mics are generally low quality but allow the simultaneous recording of audio and video without the need for external equipment. Many higher end cameras now have a dedicated mic input port which allows the for use of higher quality, external audio …