Jesse Cardoza: Director of photography, first assistant camera and gaffer/lighting technician in Boston, Massachusetts.

Wide angle lenses - 14mm - 24mm will give you added value visually. Can't go wrong with a 50mm and 85mm ... shoot flat (low contrast, drop your saturation down one notch, and drop your sharpness down one notch). Using sticks (a tripod) will give you added production value. If you shoot hand-held after you frame, step back two paces and shoot loose. You can always stabilize the shot to give it a more fluid feel.

Some still lenses have the ability to capture the light favorably for kinetics. When you see Cine lens across your lens housing. The manufacturer is guaranteeing this lens has the ability to capture light properly. Also the housing is built for cinema purposes( cine gears, "de-clicked" f stop, and a t stop). If you filmed on a Zeiss distagon 35mm ZE. 1.4( still lens) and a Zeiss Compact prime 1.5 your gonna have a hard time distinguishing which images is from which lens. Know why? They r the same elements in different housing! Manufacturers want to take advantage of us filmakers fan girling over the word "cine". L SERIES GLASS= canon cine primes . Rokinon still line = rokinon cine line. Practically the only manufacturer that does not practice this marketing strategy is Panavission and Cooke and vantage. But i am only aware they make motion picture lenses( do share if otherwise). Do your research and you will find a whole list of lenses able to render kight well enough for cinema. Fyi STANLEY KUBRICK shot on hassleblad still lenses.

I’m guessing you are referring to the lenses used in the candlelight scenes from Barry Lyndon. Sorry, but they are not Hasselblad but Zeiss Planar f0.7 lenses. Hasselblad does not make lenses. The issues with uses stills lenses are not always quality, but rather the mechanical working of the lens and the ergonomics. Stills lenses are static in normal usage when taking a shot, in cinema lenses we are always changing, focus, zoom or iris during shots. The lenses have to track all of these changes perfectly with absolutely no play in the controls when rotated in both directions and when changing rotational direction during a shot. This is a fairly demanding request. Further we want large amounts of element rotation in order to have more witness marks on the lens, although news and documentary lenses typically have a focus barrel rotation of about 90˚ so fewer marks closer together. Modifying a stills lens to work for our usage is “complicated”, which ends up being spelled with lots of $$$.

Film or digital is less of a which is better. The argument is whats are you trying to tell. Maybe like Tarantino you wish to reference older cinema, like film. Maybe you want a specific grain. A lot of creatures are saying they want to shoot on film. Project Greenlight for example. Unless you can give a better reason then for your own personal nostalgia, don't. You will spend more money, more time, and for the same quality. You also take on the risk of the DP not knowing how to properly work with film. If a DP underexposes on film, too bad you lost. However digital is sensitive to blacks and thats why we get people saying "you dont need lights". such BS. Also the medium is turning away from big screen and moving to personal, mobile screens. Filming on 35mm in this medium is overkill. No one will notice a difference until you put that on the silver screen. Also not to mention your on set sound will be uselesss. It comes down to knowing the story you want to tell. if Film will better that then go ahead. You would be less of an artist if you did not. But choosing film for film's sake will get you in hot water, and is amateur. How do i know this? Because you chose complicity over speed, reliability, and ease. I have experience filming on the Arri 435 and sr2 and sr 3 Bolex Kodak stock.

The key benefit to learning on film was expense. If there is a huge incentive to turn the camera off, you learn intentional shooting and turn it on only when you should. The video trained shoot too much material that is mediocre. Another benefit to learning on film was no video playback, no monitor and a lag of a day or more before viewing footage; you had to understand what you were doing and why. When you screwed up, no one knew til later- so you got proficient or unemployed. The romance of sprocket holes, the smell of emulsion and the sound of the whirring noise by your head is so much crap... at least to someone who has exposed millions of feet of movie film and loves where digital is today.

What an interesting point of discussion Joe! You are definitely an old soul in a young body. As for me, I feel blessed to have started in the industry when camera negative was the standard for motion picture production. On every level and in every department film demanded a high level of craft from each and every crew member. Lets face it, running a 1000 foot mag is the equivalent to going to your local ATM and maxing out your allowed withdrawals for the day. And that's just for one mag not including processing the neg and telecine costs. You had to have your act together or else your name would be not be on the next day's call sheet. Today there are very competent crews both in camera and lighting departments who perform wonderfully and with great passion. But what I find is that in this digital age the bar is quite a bit lower in regards to basic knowledge in camera, lighting, and grip crafts. When digital first came about it was awful. Everyone was trying to figure out how to get a "film look" with technology that simply would not allow it. Flash forward to today and the digital technology has finally reached the point that camera negative is a consideration but not the standard - digital is. With digital's advancement professional camera, grip, and lighting crews have now crossed over to digital production full time and with their craft the digital age of image capture is truly amazing. But as I mentioned earlier, the base line level of skill and knowledge of newly minted crew members who have not been mentored by camera negative era crew members is not up to par. During the camera negative era, I could count on everyone on set including the nubbies to have the basics down. Today I find more often than not new crew members have to be taught basic grip, lighting, and camera department functions and skills. Heaven forbid I have to turn to my gaffer and ask what stop my key light is because for some reason he read an article that states light meters are superfluous and he could throw his light meter away. So my fear is when the camera negative era crew members retire and fade away, our craft will have lost a vast knowledge base replaced by youtube tutorials and preprogrammed "looks" that can be applied in post. Some have said the romance of film is crap. This may be so. But for me it was a wondrous part of what I loved about making movies. The tick tick tick of the mag. The orange cast of the 85 filter. The ritual of "check the gate". All of this was part of our process. The process of slowing down and becoming expert at your craft. The absolute confidence my focus puller is spot on with her marks. Being elated that the production designer integrated practical lighting fixtures that matched my film stock rated at my ASA with perfect placement in my 1:85 frame. And the most special of all, witnessing the performance of talented actors through the viewing tube creating what will be an iconic scene and being the only one to truly know how magical that moment was. No video village. No camera assistant monitor. Only you and the actors doing the dance. Crap some say? I just know it was pure joy...

Curt, the "film was better" nostalgia is whats crap to me. What is not crap was the autonomy of the DP and camera crew, because of the very waning craft you mention. The film disciplined experience was decidedly superior- I was there too and agree with almost all your comments regarding the film experience and crews and mentoring and craft or lack of it. How do you get newbs to learn film discipline when they for the most part have mere hipster nostalgia and romance that is imagined ( see also Polaroids and Lomogaphy), vs our expertise to counter their tutorial fed DIY short attention span mentatlity? Not from a new Super 8 camera with an LCD. Rik- if not for you and 8mm and Super 8mm, I'd likely not have been in this business. But you know that. Spring in the Bolex still wind up ? ;)