Year: 2023

The first day with Gonzalo:)

Cinematography: The word from Greek,

means “drawing movement”

: Cinema is the art of moving images, yet it could be said to be simply made up from a series of still images, or A story told in pictures.

When we take a picture, the camera undergoes this process.

1. Light is reflected or emitted from an object or a scene.
2. Light is focused through the lens/optics of the camera.
3. Light is let through the lens aperture.
4. Light is let through the camera shutter.
5. Light is captured by the digital sensor, is electrically processed and stored in a digital file.

Exposure is vital element of a picture. If I took a picture with the correct exposure, making some under or over exposure pictures is easy, however, the opposite is quite difficult.

The correct exposure value (EV) is a combination of three elements: ISO, Aperture, Shutter speed

ISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization”.

ISO refers to the sensitivity of film to light and it is measured in numbers. The higher number, the more sensitive to light. At first, it was only for film camera though, it was adopted by digital camera. As high ISO makes a picture too grainy, we try to use the lowest ISO value as possible according to the lighting conditions of the scene.

Aperture is known as F-value or F-stop. A large f-stop equals a small aperture opening, which lets through a small amount of light. A small f-stop equals a large aperture, which lets through a large amount of light.

We can adjust Depth of Field using aperture. A large F-stop increase the depth of field(Deep DoF) and a small f-stop decrease the depth of field(Shallow DoF).

Shutter speed is the length of time the camera shutter is open, exposing light onto the camera sensor. It controls motion in the image. The slower shutter speed the brighter and blurred picture is taken.

We can check the metadata of the picture on camera and phone including ISO, shutter speed, and so on. Even if I forgot the setting of camera, I can check it later.

Frame rate is the amount of individual frames that the camera captures per second. 24fps/25fps is the standard for video on web or film as those look the most natural to the human eyes. For live TV or sports, 30fps is common. 60fps, 120fps, and higher frame rates are used for recording video to be played back in slow motion.

• NTSC(National Television System Committee): 30fps and it used in North America and Japan.
• PAL(Phase Alternating Line): 25fps and it used in Europe and South East Asia.

Angle of view is the extent of the scene captured by the camera. Changing the Focal length, changes the angle of view. The shorter the focal length the wider the angle of view. If I shoot everything through 8mm, it makes hard to focus on particular thing(appropriate for landscape). 50mm lens is similar to the normal view seen by the human eye.

Digital file format is a type of standardized encoding to store digital video data on a computer. The file format container includes video and audio data.

• MP4: Most digital devices and platforms support which is the most universal video format around. MP4 is appropriate for unprofessional videos such as Instagram, Youtube, etc.(not for film)
• MOV: Developed by Apple, it is the video format specifically designed for QuickTime Plyaer. However, it takes up significantly more space as its quality is usually so high
• AVI: AVI video format is one of the most versatile video formats. However, with such high quality, AVI video format file size is large, which is more conducive for people to storage and archival than to stream or download(DNxHR/DNxHD).
• ProRes: a high quality, lossy video compression format developed by Apple. It is used in post production that supports up to 8K. it is widely used as a final format delivery method for HD broadcast files in commercials, features, Blu-ray and streaming.