Cinematography

In the 1830s, three different solutions for moving images were invented based on the concept of revolving drums and disks, the stroboscope by Simon von Stampfer in Austria, the phenakistoscope by Joseph Plateau in Belgium, and the zoetrope by William Horner in Britain.

In 1845, Francis Ronalds invented the first successful camera able to make continuous recordings of the varying indications of meteorological and geomagnetic instruments over time.

On 19 June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named "Sallie Gardner" in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras.

[5] At the end of the decade, Muybridge had adapted sequences of his photographs to a zoopraxiscope for short, primitive projected "movies", which were sensations on his lecture tours by 1879 or 1880.

French biologist and filmmaker Jean Painleve lobbied heavily for the use of film in the scientific field, as the new medium was more efficient in capturing and documenting the behavior, movement, and environment of microorganisms, cells, and bacteria, than the naked eye.

[citation needed] The origins of today's cinema go back to the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, who in 1895 developed a machine called the Cinematographe, which had the ability to capture and show moving images.

In the following year, Charles Francis Jenkins and his projector, the Phantoscope,[12] made a successful audience viewing while Louis and Auguste Lumière perfected the Cinématographe, an apparatus that took, printed, and projected film, in Paris in December 1895.

In 1896, movie theaters were open in France (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Nice, Marseille); Italy (Rome, Milan, Naples, Genoa, Venice, Bologna, Forlì); Brussels; and London.

Ken Dancyger's book The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice provides valuable insights into the historical and theoretical aspects of black-and-white cinematography.

The book delves into the artistic choices and technical considerations involved in creating compelling black-and-white imagery, offering a comprehensive understanding of the technique.

Black-and-white cinematography allows filmmakers to focus on the interplay of light and shadow, emphasizing the contrast between different elements within a scene.

Although listed under the general heading of "panoramas" in the sales catalogues of the time, those films shot straight forward from in front of a railway engine were usually specifically referred to as "phantom rides".

In 1897, Robert W. Paul had the first real rotating camera head made to put on a tripod, so that he could follow the passing processions of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in one uninterrupted shot.

This device had the camera mounted on a vertical axis that could be rotated by a worm gear driven by turning a crank handle, and Paul put it on general sale the next year.

Ken Dancyger's book The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice provides valuable insights into the historical and theoretical aspects of black-and-white cinematography.

The book delves into the artistic choices and technical considerations involved in creating compelling black-and-white imagery, offering a comprehensive understanding of the technique.

This style of cinematography aims to create a realistic portrayal of the world, often using natural lighting, handheld cameras, and a documentary-like approach to filming.

Classic Hollywood is a style of cinematography characterized by its use of highly polished, studio-produced films with glamorous sets, bright lighting, and romanticized narratives.

A close up angle can highlight detail on someone's face, while a wider lens can give key information that takes place in the background of a shot.

For proper selection, the cinematographer needs that all lenses be engraved with T-stop, not f-stop so that the eventual light loss due to the glass does not affect the exposure control when setting it using the usual meters.

In Citizen Kane (1941), cinematographer Gregg Toland and director Orson Welles used tighter apertures to create every detail of the foreground and background of the sets in sharp focus.

This film was among those exported to Europe with the first Kinetoscope machines in 1895 and was seen by Georges Méliès, who was putting on magic shows in his Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris at the time.

He took up filmmaking in 1896, and after making imitations of other films from Edison, Lumière, and Robert Paul, he made Escamotage d'un dame chez Robert-Houdin (The Vanishing Lady).

The other basic technique for trick cinematography involves double exposure of the film in the camera, which was first done by George Albert Smith in July 1898 in the UK.

To the Corsican's amazement, the duel and death of his brother are vividly depicted in the vision, and overcome by his feelings, he falls to the floor just as his mother enters the room."

Extreme slow motion, capturing many thousands of frames per second can present things normally invisible to the human eye, such as bullets in flight and shockwaves travelling through media, a potentially powerful cinematographic technique.

Film editing plays a much stronger role in this manipulation, but frame rate selection in the photography of the original action is also a contributing factor to altering time.

Robert Paul's On a Runaway Motor Car through Piccadilly Circus (1899), had the camera turn so slowly that when the film was projected at the usual 16 frames per second, the scenery appeared to be passing at great speed.

The American Society of Cinematographers defines cinematography as a creative and interpretive process that culminates in the authorship of an original work of art rather than the simple recording of a physical event.

Many of these decisions are similar to what a photographer needs to note when taking a picture: the cinematographer controls the film choice itself (from a range of available stocks with varying sensitivities to light and color), the selection of lens focal lengths, aperture exposure and focus.