Digital Cinematography

Fundamentals, Tools, Techniques, and Workflows

David Stump

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780240817910
• eBook ISBN: 9781136040412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

First published in 2014. With the shift from film to digital, a new view of the future of cinematography has emerged. Today's successful cinematographer must be equal parts artist, technician, and business-person. The cinematographer needs to master the arts of lighting, composition, framing and other aesthetic considerations, as well as the technology of digital cameras, recorders, and workflows, and must know how to choose the right tools (within their budget) to get the job done. David Stump's Digital Cinematography focusses primarily on the tools and technology of the trade, looking at how digital cameras work, the ramifications of choosing one camera versus another, and how those choices help creative cinematographers to tell a story. This book empowers you to both correctly choose the right camera and workflow for your project from today's incredibly varied options, as well as understand the ins and outs of implementing those options. Stump sheds a light on the confusing advantages and disadvantages of shooting theatrical features using digital technology and what it can or can't do. Topics covered include:

* Detailed coverage of Arriflex, Blackmagic, Canon, Ikonoskop, Panasonic, Panavision, Phantom, Red, Silicon Imaging, Sony, and Weisscam digital motion picture cameras

* Coverage of a wide variety of lenses, including Angenieux, Canon, Cooke, Fujinon, Hawk, Leica, Panavision, Red, Schneider, Sony, UniqOptics, Vantage, and Zeiss

* Coverage of recorders, displays, and look management tools

* Exposure theory tips - learn how to correctly expose digital cameras

* Focusing tips - learn how to focus digital cameras correctly

* Checklists to help design digital workflows

* Practical tips on preparation - prepare for shooting a digital motion picture like a professional

* Camera set-up and operation, color management, digital intermediates, 3D stereo cinematography, future trends, and much more

If you aspire to be a successful cinematographer in this new digital age, or if you already are a working cinematographer in need of a resource to help you stay on top of your game, this is a must-read book.

Chapter 1
What Is Digital

Cinematography begins with light.

Figure 1.1 The spectrum of visible color.

Cinematography is the art of manipulating, capturing and recording motion pictures on a medium such as film, or in the case of digital cinematography, on an image sensor such as a charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip set.

Figure 1.2 Charlie Chaplin at his hand-cranked Bell and Howell model 2709 camera.

In order to understand how digital photography works, it is important to understand how visible light gets separated by narrow band color filters into the three primary colors (red, green and blue) that we use to reproduce images.

Figure 1.3 Visible light divided into red, green, and blue (RGB) components.
Image courtesy of Tim Kang

In a modern 3-chip CCD camera, light of various color wavelengths is directed to three individual 1920 × 1080 photosite monochrome red-only, green-only, and blue-only sensors by a system of filters and prisms.

Figure 1.4 How an image is separated into red, green and blue components. A blue sensor (A), a red sensor (B), and a green sensor (C) collect light directed to them by dichroic prism surfaces F1 and F2.

Each of these three sensors collects photons from all its photosites to create three individual pictures of the scene: red only, green only, and blue only.

Three-chip cameras are very efficient collectors of light from the scene they record. Relatively speaking, not much of the light from the scene is wasted, because the photosites are said to be co-sited; they have the ability to sample light in all three color wavelengths from the same apparent place by using a semitransparent dichroic prism system.

Every photosite functions like a microscopic light meter; more photons entering and collecting in a light well generate a higher voltage out, whereas fewer photons entering generates a lower voltage out.

Figure 1.5 Photosites are photon-collection buckets that turn light into voltages.
Image courtesy of Jay Holben

Thousands of these photon-collecting buckets work like microscopic light meters, giving light readings on a pixel-for-pixel, frame-for-frame basis.

Figure 1.6 Photosites turn light into voltages.

For every frame, on a frame-by-frame basis, each of the three color sensors generates and measures the individual voltage from each discrete photosite commensurate with the number of photons that arrived at that photosite.

Figure 1.7 The process of analog to digital.
Image courtesy of Tim Kang

Those voltages are sampled at very a high frequency and converted to digital code values in an analog to digital (A-to-D) sampling processor.

In single-chip (monoplanar) sensor cameras, light is directed to a grid of adjacent individual photosites that are optically filtered by microscopic red, green, and blue (RGB) filters at each site. Each photosite captures light from only one of the primary colors while rejecting light from the other two primary colors.

Figure 1.8 Bayer pattern color filter array.
Image courtesy of Tim Kang

Much of the light (and, therefore, color information) arriving at such a sensor is discarded, rejected by the color filtration scheme, and RGB pixels must be created by combining samples from adjacent, non– co-sited photosites.

Figure 1.9 Filtered red, green, and blue light landing on non–co-sited photosites.
Image courtesy of John Savard

Those photosites are arranged in one of numerous possible patterns according to the dictates of the hardware manufacturer (see Figure 1.10). The light falling on such an array of photosites is largely wasted. A green photosite can only collect the green light that falls on it; red and blue light are rejected. A red photo-site can only collect the red light that falls on it; green and blue are rejected. A blue photosite can only collect the blue light that falls on it, rejecting red and green light. The inefficiency of such systems can be fairly easily intuited.

What Are Pixels?

The word pixel is a contraction of pix (“picture”) and el (for “element”).

A pixel is the smallest addressable full-color (RGB) element in a digital imaging device. The address of a pixel corresponds to its physical coordinates on a sensor or screen.

Pixels are full-color samples of an original image. More pixels provide a more accurate presentation of the original image. The color and tonal intensity of a pixel are variable. In digital motion picture cinematography systems, a color is typically represented by three component intensities of red, green, and blue.

Figure 1.10 A variety of color filter patterns.

Figure 1.11 Only pixels contain RGB (red, green, and blue) information.

Photosites Are Not Pixels!

This is one of the most important distinctions we can make when talking about digital cinema cameras!

Figure 1.12 Red, green, and blue photosites combine to create full color RGB pixels.

Photosites (or sensels as they are referred to in camera sensor design) can only carry information about one color. A photosite can only be red or green or blue.

Photosites must be combined to make pixels. Pixels carry tricolor RGB information.

Analog to Digital

Quantization is the process of converting continuously varying analog voltages into a series of numerical values called...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments and Dedications
• Foreword
• A Note on the Color
• Chapter 1 What Is Digital
• Chapter 2 Camera Sensors
• Chapter 3 Color
• Chapter 4 The Color-Space Conundrum
• Chapter 5 MTF, Resolution, Contrast, and Nyquist Theory
• Chapter 6 Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios
• Chapter 7 Lenses
• Chapter 8 Camera Issues
• Chapter 9 High-Resolution Digital Motion Picture Cameras
• Chapter 10 Camera Setup and Operation
• Chapter 11 Prep, Workflow Design, and Testing
• Chapter 12 The Shoot
• Chapter 13 Color Management, Compression, and Workflow
• Chapter 14 Recorders
• Chapter 15 Displays
• Chapter 16 Postproduction and Digital Intermediate
• Chapter 17 Delivering and Archiving Digital Movies
• Index