Director of photography Art Adams knew he wanted to look through cameras for a living at the age of 12. After ten years in Hollywood working on feature films, TV series, commercials, music videos, visual effects and docs he returned to his native San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently shoots commercials and high-end corporate marketing and branding projects. When Art isn’t shooting he consults on product design and marketing for a number of motion picture equipment manufacturers. His clients have included Sony, Arri, Canon, Tiffen, Schneider Optics, PRG, Cineo Lighting, Element Labs, Sound Devices and DSC Labs. His writing has appeared in HD Video Pro, American Cinematographer, Australian Cinematographer, Camera Operator Magazine and ProVideo Coalition. He is a current member of the International Cinematographers Guild, and a past active member of the SOC and SMPTE.
Still photographers love histograms. Cinematographers hate them. Here’s why our world is so different from theirs in this regard… This is a normal histogram, pulled from Resolve 10. Histograms count pixels, nothing more, and they only tell us how many…
Years ago I turned a low-end SD camera into a pinhole device by covering the lens port with black wrap and poking a hole in it. I decided to try again with a much higher-end camera. Here’s what happened… In…
New OLED monitors are able to display most of the DCI P3 color space, something that was previously impossible to do without a digital projector and a very dark room. Some are saying that on-set monitoring in P3 is a…
Every time I download a new version of Resolve I have to fill out the little questionnaire that asks me what features I’d like to see added quickly. I always write, “Add a waveform scale that reads in percentages!” And…
Being detail oriented is a great thing. Obsessing over the wrong detail costs a production in both time, money and storytelling. Years ago I shot a scene where a character walks down a hallway into a sunlit room. There was…
Ever since my days working in film I’ve tried to find some way to equate my sense of brightness to real world exposure. I learned to do this well with film, but HD has been a mystery… until now. On…
One of the greatest things about the Sony F55 is that I can shoot S-Log2 inexpensively. One of the worst things about it is that I can’t see what I’m doing. Here’s how I worked around that. In my last…
In my last article I wrote about lighting a dramatic library scene using only two lights. Here’s how I lit a rich, dreamy bar scene using the same two lights. Bay Area dot-coms are big on creature comforts. I shot…
Sometimes the best shoots are the ones where you just have to make do. A recent music video threw me a challenge: do the best you can with two lights. So… I did. Here’s how… Recently Sony sent Adam Wilt…
This is the final article in my “Best of” Reddit AMA series. Lots more goodness follows… On being asked how to communicate your desire for a particular look with a DP: Traditionally you share films and images that you like…