I spent three weeks on a documentary in the Highlands once, watching a kid half my age try to fix a jittery wide shot by mounting a three-axis gimbal that cost more than my first car. He was sweating, fighting the motors, and still looking like he was filming from the back of a runaway…
I was halfway through a lighting setup in a damp basement in Bristol—the kind of location where the humidity feels like a physical weight—when I noticed a cluster of dark, stubborn spots blooming across my high-contrast sky shot. I spent twenty minutes in post-production trying to mask them out, only to realize I’d been fighting…
Read More “Sensor Cleaning: a No-nonsense Guide to Not Ruining Your Camera” »
I remember sitting in a dim editing suite at three in the morning, staring at a rough cut that felt fundamentally broken. The lighting was moody, the blocking was tight, but the pacing was a disaster—the “soul” of the scene was just missing. People often make the same mistake when they move from film to…
I spent three weeks in the High Atlas mountains a decade ago, lugging a kit that felt like it was designed by someone who had never actually walked more than ten feet from a studio power outlet. I had the best specs on paper, but by day four, I wasn’t looking at the sensor readout;…
Read More “Stop Buying Gear You Don’t Need: the Truth About Choosing the Right Camera for Travel.” »
I remember a shoot in a drafty warehouse outside of Bristol, ten years ago, where the producer spent forty minutes arguing about whether we needed a more expensive wireless follow-focus system. Meanwhile, the sun was dropping through a skylight that we hadn’t even accounted for, and the entire lighting plan was dissolving in real-time. That’s…
I’ve spent most of my life watching people stare at spec sheets, convinced that a higher resolution or a sharper sensor is the magic bullet for a mediocre image. They go out into the field, chase the golden hour, and then come home frustrated because the shot didn’t match the vision in their head. The…
Read More “The 7 Best Essential Accessories for Landscape Photography to Level Up Your Shots” »
I once spent six hours in a drafty, derelict warehouse in South Wales, convinced I’d found the perfect “cinematic” location for a low-budget thriller. I was so enamored with the peeling paint and the grit that I completely ignored the fact that the only window was facing north and the electrical mains were held together…
I spent most of the nineties watching light meters dance while my hands were stained with celluloid, back when every foot of film was a literal line item on a budget. Nowadays, I see kids staring at spec sheets, convinced that the best ways to record high quality video involve upgrading to a sensor with…
I spent twenty minutes last week listening to a kid on a set explain why he needed a specific set of vintage primes because of their “soul,” while he was standing in a room lit by a single, flickering fluorescent tube. It’s the same old song: people think that understanding different types of camera lenses…
I spent most of my twenties watching kids walk into a room with a brand-new camera and a massive credit card debt, thinking they could buy their way out of a bad setup. They’d spend three hours arguing over the dynamic range of a new sensor while the sun was literally setting outside the window….