Sensors and Lenses - Part 1 December 11^th 2019 - 09:00 AM

The push to create the ideal digital cinematography camera has now been going on for, arguably, two decades. There were a couple of standout attempts in the 1980s involving high definition tube cameras, but the introduction of Sony’s HDCAM tape format in 1998 served more or less as the starting p

Real Film Grain For Video December 9^th 2019 - 09:00 AM

People have been making pictures for both the big and small screens for almost a century. In an industry with a history that long, it’s no surprise that the perpetual search for something new has long been tempered by a certain respect for tradition. Or, to put it another w

PBS NewsHour Goes West November 25^th 2019 - 10:13 AM

Last month the popular PBS evening news program NewsHour went on air with a new West Coast edition, live from Arizona State University (ASU)’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Phoenix. The school’s facilities are now considered the Western bureau for “PBS NewsHour West,” serving as a reporting hub f

For DOPs: The Peril Of Larger, Brighter TVs November 22^nd 2019 - 09:00 AM

Each year, as the TVs in our homes grow larger and brighter, DOPs have to wonder how this will affect our craft and the integrity of our images. As it is, HDR is touted as a kind of industry panacea, addressing in an orderly way (more or less) the vastly

What Is The Role Of NMOS In ST2110 Adoption? November 20^th 2019 - 09:00 AM

At the recent IBC conference, vendors were showing ST2110 compatible products. The IP pavilion was there to demonstrate how it all works nicely together, all interoperable, etc. There were sessions to introduce and provide the information and knowledge to implement ST2110. And a few announcements about new facilities and mobile

HDR - Part 5 - Jargon Buster November 6^th 2019 - 09:00 AM

The techniques of 35mm film are seductively simple. The process is the same no matter what the camera in use, or how the film will be cut. Conversely, every digital camera might have its own ways of approaching different parts of the process, creating a forest of terminology – gamma, gamut, s

Broadcasting 8KTV, Because You Can October 2^nd 2019 - 09:00 AM

The broadcast industry is mired in a state of resolution confusion. HD is the format du jour, 4K UHD is emerging quickly and proponents of 8K refuse to stay quiet. For a broadcast engineer, it’s enough to make your head spin.

Shooting HDR: A More Efficient Way September 24^th 2019 - 09:00 AM

As High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (i.e.BT.2020) are increasingly mandated by major industry players like Netflix and Amazon, DOPs in the broadcast realm are under intense pressure to get it right during original image capture. We all know (or learned the hard way) that the

HDR - Part 4 - Surviving Modern Colorimetry September 10^th 2019 - 01:00 PM

Most people are aware that any color can be mixed from red, green and blue light, and we make color pictures out of red, green and blue images. The relationship between modern color imaging and the human visual system was recently discussed by John Watkinson in his series on color.

HDR - Part 3 - Grading August 26^th 2019 - 10:00 AM

Almost since photography has existed, people have pursued ways of modifying the picture after it’s been shot. The “dodge” and “burn” tools in Photoshop are widely understood as ways to make things brighter or darker, but it’s probably less widely understood that they refer to techniques for exposure control tha