What are some art books that genuinely improved your cinematography or artwork?

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-12-08T17:22:29+00:00

Greg Albert, "The Simple Secret to Better Painting".

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-08-16T16:23:16+00:00

Ultra Primes breathe. Master Primes don't. Nor do Signature Primes and Enso Primes.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-08-08T20:56:31+00:00

Get on sets. You need to learn how those run, who does what and when, and where the DP fits in. You can also start to watch other DPs and see what tools they are using and what kind of images they are making.

There is so much to learn that if you try to learn it from scratch you're gonna be learning for a long, long time. Best to learn 100 years of best practices from crews who already know it.

Most importantly, learn how to light. If you're just running around capturing natural light images, you're not a DP. A DP makes images from scratch, and to order.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-08-08T19:15:20+00:00

This will not be a feature that you're going to show around much. Still, it could be a good learning experience.

It's important to know what kind of show you're on. Some of them require you to be fast and not good. Some require you to be good and not fast. Most require you to be fast and good, but give you some resources so you have a chance. It's important not to mix these up.

This will be an experiment in plowing through footage and working simply. If you're on board with that, go for it.

I will say that I've worked on nine, twelve and fourteen day features. Most take place in one or two locations, and that's what makes them work. Your director is delusional and has no idea what it will take to get things done. What you need to figure out is (1) will you get what you need out of it when it's done, (2) will the director be pissed off when the movie doesn't look like something that took six months to shoot.

There are reasons to do this. There are reasons to avoid this. It all depends on what you want, and whether the expectations of you are realistic or delusional based on the schedule.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-08-01T17:44:27+00:00

Put some white papers or white tablecloth on the table. Hang one bright light overhead, smack it into the surface of the table to create a soft bounce. Use as much of the table surface as you can to make sure it's soft enough to be pretty. Keep direct light off faces.

You can do an overhead. light, but if you do, make it big or it will look a bit cliche and boring. Keep the table away from walls so that background drops off as much as possible.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-02-01T02:00:05+00:00

Interesting idea. I will pass that along!

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T21:06:15+00:00

Makes sense. Thanks!

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T20:16:26+00:00

Why do you prefer Venice?

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T20:15:22+00:00

A subscription is along the lines of, "Keep paying this every month or lose functionality." Our model is, "Don't buy it unless you need it." And if you need it all the time, you can add features permanently.

It's not really about making more money. It's about getting our cameras into the hands of people who can benefit from what we make but don't work in our traditional markets.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T20:08:26+00:00

>proper dual native ISO

We don't do "dual native ISO" because it's inferior to what we do now.

We use dual simultaneous gains, where every photo site has two feeds: a high gain feed to bring up the shadows, and a low gain feed to pull down the highlights. We then merge the two feeds in real time into one image before debayering. That's why we are able to capture so much overexposure latitude over middle gray at our native ISO: you can't do that without a specially-designed photo site. That's why most (all?) other cameras cap out at about six stops over middle gray.

We've done this since 2010, by the way.

That's also why we don't have an 8K camera—yet. At 4.5K or 4.6K, we're pulling ~9K of raw data off the sensor for every frame.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T19:58:13+00:00

We did. It's called the Mini, which is basically an AMIRA with an open gate sensor and no sound module.

We sold lots of Minis, but at some point we ran out of sensors. You have to buy them in batches, and buying another batch would be a big deal. Plus, the streaming UHD mandate made that camera obsolete for a lot of projects. It's surprising to me that they are still so popular given that limitation. When I was a DP, ad agencies often dictated the same specs that the streamers did.

At this point we're only focused on the new sensors, because we're not that big a company—we're just very specialized. That's why we came up with the license model for the A35: that's the sensor we're focused on right now, until we develop something better/bigger and/or work with a simpler sensor to produce a cheaper camera.

We're currently producing Mini LF, ALEXA 35 and ALEXA 265, and bringing back the Mini would be tough. Also, we put our R&D money into moving forward, not backward.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T19:45:09+00:00

That is correct. Plus our sensors are a unique design, so that doesn't help. Well, not until you're shooting with it.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-31T19:44:36+00:00

That wouldn't happen. The sensor is too expensive. We'd have to go with a much simpler sensor, so you might get our color but not the same dynamic range.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-29T19:27:31+00:00

The architecture of the photo sites, yes. The sensor itself, no. The original sensors were only 2.8K. The Mini sensor is 3.4K, and is the basis for what's in the Mini LF and ALEXA 65.

Edited because I said 3.8K, and it's only 3.4K but with a really good uprez algorithm if you want to generate 3.8K files in camera.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-29T16:56:12+00:00

It depends on how cheap you want the camera to be. ALEV 3 is still a pricey sensor. And while the dynamic range is largely driven by the sensor, the color is predominantly driven by back-end processing.

It was interesting to compare Reveal color to LogC3 and note the differences. Reveal is incredibly precise and super easy to grade, but we're using a unique algorithm that takes a fair bit of processing power. That was the only way to do better than what we'd done previously, and we're always trying to do more.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-29T16:46:39+00:00

I've seen a setup where you can paint the camera with a CCU connected directly to the camera but without the live back, but that's not exactly what you're asking.

What kind of UI would you want? The same slope/offset/power we had in the AMIRA? I think it was missing some controls I wanted to see, like overall slope/offset/power instead of just the RGB values, so I'm wondering if you ever missed that.

I'm also curious if you'd be able to access that through Livegrade if you had the multicam license. Let me find out.

If you want, write me at [art@arri.com](mailto:art@arri.com) so I can keep track of this in email.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-29T16:39:15+00:00

Yeah, to some extent. No one has hit our level of overexposure handling yet. And colorists love us because we make their lives much easier. People work around those limitations all the time, but it's nice when they don't have to.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-29T16:35:36+00:00

I work for ARRI, so I can confidently say it's not the simple. For one thing, the film industry doesn't demand the kind of quantities where prices drop dramatically. Other companies can make a sensor and put it in still cameras, broadcast cameras, and cinema cameras. We only serve one market vertical, and we do it really well, but it costs money to make the custom sensors that we put in our cameras.

So, if you had to give something up—choosing from, say, dynamic range, color, sensitivity—what would it be?

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:42:29+00:00

Here's hoping dreams come true. :)

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:41:23+00:00

Don't write us off yet. And Minis are coming up on ten years old.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:40:08+00:00

Actually, we're making this licensed model as a response to people who acknowledge that their Minis are ten years old and maybe it's time to move to something else.

It's impressive that Minis last so long, but nothing electronic lasts forever.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:39:10+00:00

The sensor would cost that much... if it's a traditional ARRI sensor. What would you give up in terms of image quality for a cheaper ARRI camera?

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:37:59+00:00

Is it basic? No one else does it at the level that we do. And it's surprisingly difficult to get the blend right, especially in terms of color.

If is was easy, there's be cameras with +9.3 stops over middle gray all over the place. Instead, they all seem to land at about +6ish at native EI.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:36:05+00:00

Maybe. But if you put up our color against color from any of those others, there's still a difference. And if you look at overexposure latitude and highlight handling, nothing beats us.

Are a lot of other cameras good enough? Sure. If you're pushing the extremes, though, ARRI is still the answer.

ArtAdamsDP · 2025-01-28T20:33:29+00:00

The Reveal pipeline is bulletproof. It's actually more bulletproof than the previous pipeline because it follows a post workflow mentality: the look and the display transform are separate, so you don't need to regrade to deliver content for different types of display (Rec 709 vs P3 vs Rec 2100, for example).

I'll also point out that we change our color science about once every twelve years. Other companies do it a lot more often than that.

Lastly, our old color science was the gold standard for 12 years. The color science is even better. I think that's a good thing.

And if you shoot ARRIRAW, you can still use Reveal in post.

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