FIELD NOTES
Field notes - a collection of ideas, workflows and tests from a Yorkshrie based director of photography.
This blog is a working journal. A place to collect thoughts, experiments and observations from the day-to-day realities of cinematography, analogue photography and running a creative business.
Most posts grow out of the projects I work on, the things I learn and the occasional industry topic that catches my attention. There’s a fair bit about Sony camera systems, although ARRI, RED and Blackmagic make appearances too.
Primarily, I write for myself. It’s a way of documenting my work, keeping track of experiments and putting thoughts down before they disappear. Some of it might be useful to fellow professionals, camera assistants, operators and aspiring cinematographers.
Other posts are simply a little more detailed orinated that interest about 1% of us.
Either way, you’re very welcome.
The Quail - A review of Anton Bauer’s Titon Base (fuelled by Donuts)
This August I had the chance to film at The Quail Rally and Motor Sport Gathering in Carmel, California — one of those dream shoots, especially for a petrolhead, that reminds me exactly why picking up a camera has allowed a shy kid from Barnsley the chance to travel and see the world.
Headless Holidays
Good composition is deeply subjective. Despite all the formulas, rules and framing guides we’re taught, I have always felt composition is more instinct than instruction. Some people have it, and — controversial as it may sound — some don’t. My dad for example, he couldn’t frame a picture to save his life - considerable amounts headless holiday memories.
Glass & Ghosts: Testing Vintage Lenses for a Hammer-Inspired Short
There’s something about Hammer Horror that sticks to your ribs. All fog and folklore, decaying aristocracy and candlelit corridors—those lurid British nightmares where Peter Cushing stared down evil with an academic’s cool and the impeccable Christopher Lee loomed through the shadows like a gothic monument on stabilised head.
EI Decoration vs Architecture
After posting our FX3/Venice exposure test, a few people got in touch with questions. Fair questions. Important ones, especially to younger cinematographers. This is the follow-up—because EI and ISO aren’t just about making your image brighter or darker. They’re about shaping what lives at the extremes of your image: the texture in the shadows, the roll-off in the highlights, the mood that creeps in at the margins.
Four walls of choice
There’s a hidden superpower to aspect ratio. It doesn’t sound sexy. It’s not some new camera or a lens with a trendy name. But when I’m first asked to help shape the look of a project, it’s where my mind goes first. Yet hardly anyone consciously thinks about it. Not properly. But everyone — everyone on set, everyone in the audience — feels it.
Grey cards, 50% of the frame
Most people probably think colour temperature is a minor detail, one of those things you set and forget. Dial in 5600K, maybe 3200K, make sure it looks about right, and crack on. It RAW or Log right. Simple. Except it isn’t - at least not for me. I’m a specialist, I’m hired to care deeply about the images I help create, and yeah, not everyone cares to that levels and thats ok. But if you’re still here, reading this, I’m guessing you care to.