Siemens star of Sharp Max seen through a Carl Zeiss 28mm DigiPrime in viewfinder of a Sony PMW-350.
Photo by D. W. Leitner

For projects requiring high shooting ratios in the early 1980s, you could shoot 16mm or try on for size one of those newfangled "camcorders" from Sony, Panasonic, or Bosch: Betacam, Recam, or Quartercam. (Mid-word capitalization arrived with the dot.com era a decade later.) The first two featured 1/2in. videotape cassettes, the last, 1/4in. (Ampex in the United States, original inventor of video recording, also proposed 1/4in. helical recording, but never became a player.)

Success of 1/4in. videotape, an idea ahead of its time, would await introduction of MiniDV in the late ’90s, but the 1/2in. videotape camcorder took off from the starting gate. (Would you believe "camcorder" had to be coined by a reviewer? David Lachenbruch, longtime editorial director of the newsletter Television Digest, also coined "consumer electronics." Anyone know who came up with "prosumer"?)

1/2in. videotape camcorders, epitomized by Betacam, are the reason many of us first encountered the eccentricities and shortcomings of video zooms designed for electronic newsgathering. (Who came up with ENG? Or EFP, electronic field production, for that matter?) more

Basilica, from New Work: Newark in 3D.

Stereoscopy, or 3D imaging, has been around as long as photography, at least since1840, when the English inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone, who first explained binocular vision, fashioned his original stereoscope for displaying photos in stereo pairs. Stereoscopes were widely popular, even common, throughout the second half of the 19th century, as evidenced by their easy availability at flea markets today. I have two wooden models from that era on my bookshelf.

By comparison, theatrical 3D movies enjoyed only two brief spikes of popularity, first in the early 1950s (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder), then in the 1980s (Friday the 13th Part III, Jaws 3-D). Regarded as curiosities, they never achieved mainstream status, either with production crews, audiences, distributors, or exhibitors. Loading and equally exposing two strands of motion picture film was never a picnic, never mind the added interaxial and convergence lens issues unique to 3D. Dual-strip projection (in the ’50s) and funny glasses that induced headaches failed to endear the format to anyone.

But as virtually everyone attending movies today knows, 3D is experiencing a vigorous revival, propelled this time by digital technology. Compact HD cameras are easily mounted side-by-side at the human interocular distance of 55mm to 75mm (when appropriate to the image). For instance, you can strip down and slap together two Sony HDC-F950s as 3D innovator Vince Pace did for Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour and James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar, or position a pair of Flip UltraHD cameras in your backyard, as you wish. more

Prototype Samsung handheld ATSC Mobile DTV receiver at NAB 2007.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Cinema is scale. Last spring, I saw again Hitchcock’s gothic thriller Rebecca on the towering 40ft.-tall screen of a classic movie palace, Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Jersey City, N.J. (where a skinny teen named Sinatra grooving to Bing in concert had an epiphany and found his calling). Perhaps it was the antiquated 1.33 aspect ratio that made Hitch’s silvery black-and-white images appear to loom far above. Certainly it was the fact I sat up front, every dimension of my peripheral vision occupied by the magnificent 50ft. wide "display."

Rebecca, produced by David O. Selznick and adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name, hardly lacks for dramatic force. It starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine and collected two Oscars out of 11 nominations in 1940. It plays on Turner Classic Movies often enough to be familiar to many. But no television can convey the full measure of its cinematic intensity or sheer graphic power, which verge on the operatic. more

Rear of new Sony PMW-EX1R with orange-highlighted switches, HDMI port, and flatter handgrip.

You may have already heard the announcements.

No, not Canon’s announcement this week of the new 1D Mark IV EOS HDSLR with 1080p/24 and an eyebrow-raising ISO of 12,800. Not the announcement of an upcoming firmware upgrade to enable 1080p/24 in current Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs. Nor Carl Zeiss’ first T* Distagons for Canon’s EOS EF bayonet mount, shipping by the time you read this. Not even Apple’s new 21.5in. iMac with a full 1920×1080 LED backlit display and better specs than MacBook Pro, now a lean, mean one-piece HD editing machine.

These are all true. But I’m talking about Monday’s announcements from Sony—which you might have missed—one of which shuts me up. more

To a WWII combat cameraman with a 35mm Bell & Howell Eyemo, reflex viewing meant a captured German Arriflex 35mm. To today’s young camera operators, reflex viewing means a flip-out LCD.

Just as there are two camps when it comes to designing and using a handheld camcorder—compact, wrist-supported vs. elongated, shoulder-supported—there are now two camps when it comes to viewing while shooting.

The older viewing method, of course, involves putting an eye to the viewfinder cup.

Viewing a through-the-lens image, identical to that captured on motion-picture film itself, was an immense breakthrough in its day. Called "reflex" viewing, it enabled for the first time precise framing and focusing by eye at time of exposure.

The reflex viewing system commonly found in today’s motion-picture cameras dates back to the Arriflex 35 of 1937 (a battlefield acquisition prized by Allied cameramen, whose nonreflex Bell & Howells could not verify focus or exact framing). The Arriflex 35 introduced a semicircular mirrored shutter that spun around at a 45-degree angle to the film plane. As the shutter rotated into an open position, a frame of film was exposed. As it rotated to cap off further exposure, its tilted mirror bounced the image into a viewing screen. more

Editor’s note: This is the first of D.W. Leitner’s columns on cinematography. Check back each week for reviews, blogs, notes, and opinions from our longtime contributing editor, who is also an award-winning director, producer, and cinematographer of independent films showcased at film festivals like Sundance and Berlin.

Digital is not a cause. Not the shortcut some have made it out to be. It is a present-day means to innovation, that’s all. Not an end in itself.

The Cinematography Corner will be my ongoing effort to steer discussion of new technology away from starry-eyed worship of all things digital and back to established filmmaking practices. We live in a solid-state world from which there’s no turning back, but with these short entries I intend to build on a century of cinematographic art and craft rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Back in the late 1970s and 1980s when documentaries and indie features were shot on 16mm, it was conventional for an Arri SR or Aaton owner to possess a basic lens package of two zooms plus a fast wide-angle prime lens. Typically this included a wide-angle Angénieux 9.5-57mm zoom, a longer Angénieux 12-120mm zoom, and a 5.9mm T/1.9 Angénieux prime or, later, 9.5mm T/1.3 Carl Zeiss Super Speed. more