The photograph front and centre of this post is from early, early in my career. I’m cleaning what, at the time, was one of the very best HDV cameras I could get my hands on. It felt like serious filmmaking equipment. And in many ways it was. It was the tool that allowed me to start experimenting, learning how light behaved, how movement affected a scene and how a camera could begin to tell a story.

We didn’t arrive at Northlight Studios by chance. Previous test footage had already shown us how well the space worked for intimate, performance-led interview work. The scale, texture and industrial character of the studio gave us authority without artifice — exactly what this story needed.

This isn’t a great story. It is a useful one.

What follows isn’t a love letter to kit or a poetic meditation on cinema cameras. It’s a technical puzzle, the sort that eats half a day, your patience and a chunk of faith in AI and online documentation. I’m writing this so if you ever find yourself in the same situation, you don’t have to go through the same thing.

I mean, seriously—how did we get here? A grown man, writing about titanium rods. I once knew a producer who drilled holes in his toothbrush to shave grams while trekking the Himalayas. That’s the altitude of crazy we’re dealing with. Look up “first world problems” and my face is probably staring back at you.

In our busy work lives, it’s rare and quite special to have time to creatively hang out with like-minded folk, in the right space with the right tools. Not to chase anything in particular, but simply to play.

That was the spirit behind our recent lens and camera test at North Light Film Studios, tucked inside the beautifully atmospheric Brookes Mill in Armitage Bridge, Huddersfield.

For years I’ve carried around a photo of the old American Cinematographer Manual foot-candle table on my phone — the one that lists how many foot-candles you need for a given ISO/ASA/EI at a given f-stop.