Canon XL1

What I Learnt from DSLRs

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RedShark News recently published an article called “The DSLR is now dead”, based on the fact that the Canon 1D X Mark III will be the last flagship DSLR from the company and that mirrorless cameras are now first choice for most photographers. This prompted me to reflect on some of the things I learnt when I bought my first (and only) DSLR.

It was 2011, and I documented some of the challenges my new Canon 600D created for me in this blog post. But what the DSLR did really well was to introduce me to a workflow very similar in many ways to the bigger productions I’m working on now. Previously I had shot everything on prosumer camcorders, so the following things were new to me with DSLRs and have been constant ever since.

 

Shallow Depth of Field

I had been used to everything being in focus, so not really thinking about my aperture setting, just turning the iris dial until the exposure looked right. My Canon 600D set me on a journey of understanding f-stops, and eventually choosing a target stop to shoot at for focus reasons and then using lighting or ND filters to achieve that stop.

 

Prime Lenses

My lenses

Although for several years I owned a Canon XL1-S, which had interchangeable lenses, I only ever owned a couple of zooms for it. As far as I’m aware, no prime lenses to fit the XL1-S’s proprietary mount were ever made, so prime lenses were completely new to me when I got my 600D. As with aperture, it forced me to think about what field of view and degree of perspective or compression I wanted, select the appropriate lens, and then place the camera accordingly, rather than lazily zooming to get the desired framing.

 

Dual-System Sound

It’s weird now to think that I used to be tethered to the sound recordist before I switched to DSLR shooting. At the time I was doing most of my own editing as well, so syncing the sound was a pain in the arse, but it was a valuable introduction to this industry-standard way of working. It’s also weird to think that clapperboards were optional for me before this.

 

Building a camera rig

All my cameras before the 600D had a built-in viewfinder, handgrip, shoulder mount (if the camera was large enough to need one) and lens (except the XL1-S), and there was no need to add an external battery plate or a follow-focus. The idea that a camera rig needed to be built, and that it could be customised to suit different operators and situations, was a novel one to me. I have to say that I still prefer cameras that have more things built in, like the Alexa Classic. A good part of the reason I rarely use Reds is because they don’t come with viewfinders. Why anyone ever thinks a viewfinder is an optional part of a camera is utterly beyond me. It’s an important point of stabilising contact for handheld work, and your face shields it completely from extraneous light, unlike a monitor.

 

Tapeless recording

The 600D was my first camera to record to memory cards rather than magnetic tape. It was certainly scary to have to wipe the cards during a shoot, being careful to back everything up a couple of times first. Data wrangling was a tricky thing to deal with on the kind of tiny-crewed productions I was usually doing back then, but of course now it’s completely normal. Just last week I shot my new cinematography course and had the fun of staying up until 2:30am after a long day of shooting, to make sure all the footage was safely ingested! More on that course soon.

What I Learnt from DSLRs

Looking Back: “Daemos Rising”

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Who is that handsome young chap?Last month saw the re-release of Reeltime Pictures‘ Daemos Rising, an unofficial Doctor Who spin-off film I photographed way back in 2003. It’s lovely to know that the film is popular enough for a high street release after so much time, and watching it again brought back many memories. Let the sharing of these memories commence…

2003 was Doctor Who’s 40th anniversary year, but the show had been off the air for over a decade and many fans, myself included, thought it would never return. In September I was weeks away from the start of principal photography on my second (and last) no-budget feature, Soul Searcher, but I was delighted to take a break from the stresses of self-producing to DP a tribute to the show I’d grown up with. “You won’t hear anything more from me now for a week,” I announced on my Soul Searcher blog on September 16th, “for I shall be ensconced in a cottage in a woodland area of Dorset (or possibly Devon – they’re easily confused), shooting a Doctor Who spin-off film for Reeltime Pictures. As you do.”

Screen Shot 2016-08-13 at 14.59.00The location was in fact in Devon: the home of Ian Richardson, who has since sadly passed away. (Ian had an illustrious stage and screen career, including the lead role in the original UK version of House of Cards.) Although Ian’s involvement would be limited to a voiceover, his son Miles Richardson played the role of Douglas Cavendish, an ex-UNIT operative troubled by a time-travelling ghost, a creepy moving statue and of course the Daemons. For those non-Whoovers amongst you, the Daemons are a devilish alien race featured in a classic Third Doctor serial. Reaching its tentacles deep into the expanded Who-niverse, Daemos Rising was also a sequel to a prior Reeltime production, Downtime, and was tied in to a spin-off book series.

Screen Shot 2016-08-13 at 15.16.32It was Miles who recommended me to director Keith Barnfather, having worked with me earlier that year on a feature called Blood Relative. Miles was joined on screen by his wife Beverley Cressman, playing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’s daughter Kate. Rounding out the cast of three, as the aforementioned spectre, was Andrew Wisher, whose father Michael was the very first (and arguably best) actor to portray Dalek creator Davros.

The shoot didn’t start well. On the journey down to Devon, the prop shaft (bit that connects the engine to the wheels) dropped out of our rental van on the M5! Luis, the driver miraculously got us onto the hard shoulder while we still had some momentum, and the DVD extras include footage of us recovering as we awaited the RAC.

But this brush with death aside, I remember the shoot as a very happy one. It was a small team, just the three actors, Keith, his partner Anastasia, writer David J. Howe and his wife Rosie, and Luis on sound. We all stayed at the cottage, which was lovely, and enjoyed many a home-cooked meal and showbiz yarn. Miles and Andrew even gave an impromptu rendition of Billy Joel’s a cappella classic The Longest Time at one point.

Screen Shot 2016-08-13 at 14.57.17

It was the era of Mini-DV, so I was shooting on my Canon XL1-S in glorious 576i. (I remember the damp playing havoc with the DV tapes when we shot the third act in a cave system called Kent’s Cavern.) I also supplied the lighting package, which consisted of 2 x 800W Arrilites, 2 x 1000W Arrilites and a vintage 5K Mole Richardson fresnel. The latter required a local electrician to wire us a 32A socket into Ian’s fusebox! Back then I used only hard light because I didn’t know any better, and it gave everything a distinctive noir style.

Screen Shot 2016-08-13 at 15.15.26 (2)Speaking of a distinctive style, Daemos Rising is a significant milestone in my career because it was the first time I ever used smoke. The script called for spooky mist in several scenes, so Keith bought a Magnum 550 and we ended up using it on all the night exteriors. He kindly gifted me the machine at the end of the shoot, and needless to say I never looked back. Many a cast and crew may think of their poor lungs and rue the day that Keith Barnfather gave Neil Oseman his first smoke machine!

While the day interior lighting looks rough to me now, I think many of the night scenes still look pretty good 13 years on. Although my lamps were all tungsten, and the XL1 didn’t allow me to dial in a white balance, I would point the camera at something red and force the camera to white-balance on that, turning everything a nice James Cameron cyan.

Screen Shot 2016-08-13 at 15.01.20Just days after we wrapped, the BBC announced that Doctor Who would return in 2005. I fear the new generation of kids who now form the core of Who’s avid audience might find Daemos Rising a little slow and talky, but for fans of the classic series there is lots to enjoy. The tone and storyline are very Who, and there are several easter eggs scattered throughout the film. And some aspects of Daemos Rising fit the new series’ continuity too, including the Brigadier’s daughter Kate — now played by Jemma Redgrave – and UNIT’s Black Archive.

The re-release provides the opportunity to watch Daemos Rising in the aspect ratio we originally intended, 16:9 (the original DVD having been masked only to 14:9) and also offers the option of 5.1 surround sound. It’s available now from Amazon and high street retailers.

Looking Back: “Daemos Rising”