How To

SD stands for “Secure Digital” — it’s a technical specification published in the waning years of the 20th century, created by three digital giants:...

The big day has finally arrived — a video shoot for the biggest client to ever darken your door. You’re nervous, but excited and...

Until recently, directors didn’t have a lot of choice in slow motion without highly specialized equipment. 1987’s Panaflex Gold II for example, could only...

A static frame is not only boring to your audience; by keeping the camera still, you’re also missing out on one of the most fundamental storytelling tools in cinema — movement.

Mise-en-scène means “placing on stage” and refers to props, lighting, wardrobe and blocking.

Inclement weather, dead batteries, missing assistants, cars that break down, tripod legs that snap, shoots being delayed for hours, getting kicked off of locations,...

Orson Welles often had great ideas for movies and then spent years going from studio to studio in Hollywood trying to get someone interested,...

Using vintage lenses lends a unique character to modern images while breathing new life into old glass.

In its most basic form, a lens is a piece of glass or plastic with curved surfaces. Lenses are used to bend rays of...

A RAW image frame is like a film negative — different processing can give you different results.

A video camera’s ability to reproduce a smooth gradation between colors and shades is an important factor when seeking to capture filmic images. The...

The action camera market segment, popularized by GoPro, has made point of view (POV) filmmaking accessible to the masses. There’s something compelling about watching...

We all know light sensors make our cameras work, but what makes a good light sensor? Which camera and image sensor combo is best...

If you’re new to shooting video, you may notice that fellow camera geeks like to talk a lot about “glass”. While there are a lot of things made of glass in the video world, there’s only one thing called “glass”: Your camera lens. Here's how it works to produce a useable, in-focus image.

One of the great things that video can do is show us our world in a way that’s impossible or very difficult for humans...

There’s a 19th century poem by American writer Edward Rolland Sill called “Opportunity.” It’s about a battle: a cowardly soldier leaves the field, complaining...

Camera-equipped drones are capable of capturing brilliant, awe-inspiring shots, and chances are you’ll want to learn the essentials of beautiful aerial cinematography yourself.

There are actually shapes and alignments that people find pleasing. But photo and film composition also needs to tell a story.

We’ve got this picture in our minds of a director holding her fingers up in twin L shapes, one inverted, and peering through the...

We’ve all had those moments in our lives when we are stopped in our tracks by the awe-inspiring beauty of the “now”. Magnificent morning...