Antonio Calvache: Swing-Tilt Lenses

From American Cinematographer, Industry Town Embraces the Indies by Holly Willis (July 1998)

"To be more straightforward in the sense of not feeling that the camera suddenly becomes dizzy and high with the characters. We wanted to show the characters from a realistic point of view, but at the same time communicate some of what they were going through. I used Otto Nemenz's Swing-and-Tilt lenses, some dutch angles and time-lapse photography, being careful not to let the overall approach become excessive. The lens is mounted on bellows, so it's like a large-format view camera used in still photography in which you can control the depth of field by tilting and/or swinging the lens. I used it inside the ambulance when I wanted to isolate one character from his environment. The challenge in working with such narrow depth of field is doubled when using Swing-and-Tilt lenses, since the focus is not only affected by the distance from the subject to the camera, but also by its position in the frame. Even if the subject doesn't move, you have to pull focus as you pan or tilt the camera. You can imagine how helpless the first A.C. feels. When shooting for the large screen, it's also scary to have the whole image out of focus except for one piece of a face an eye or a mouth so I tried to be extremely careful. As it turned out, I was very happy with the results."

- Antonio Calvache

Ellen Kuras: Swing-Tilt Lenses

From American Cinematographer, 4 Little Girls by Eric Rudolph (January 1998)

"We used swing-and-tilt lenses to selectively focus on certain parts of the images to enhance the narrative. When we shot news clippings, we would sometimes start sharp on the first couple of lines of the article and then rack from soft focus to sharp focus for the headline. We did this so the viewer would first get an idea of what the article was about and then get rolled into the impact of the headline, which states the facts in a few bold words. We thought this was more effective than having viewers just read a series of headlines. With photos and some of the documents, such as the death certificates, we would rack-focus to the date of the bombing or the cause of death to give a more emotional feel to the image. We were constantly looking for those sorts of opportunities in the pictures and documents."

-Ellen Kuras, ASC

Mikael Salomon: Preston Light Ranger

From American Cinematographer, Wet and Wild by George Turner (January 1998)

"Also, Howard Preston [of Preston Cinema Services] has an autofocus device called the Light Ranger, which we used. One of the problems of shooting in water is that you can't set marks down for the actors. But if you keep the Light Ranger's viewfinder crosshairs on the subject, such as a person moving around, it will focus the camera automatically. We made shots at 96fps with a wide open 300mm lens, and they came out razor-sharp. However, the Light Ranger didn't always work if there was too much rain, because a laser measures distance and the drops could sometimes interfere with the beam"

- Mikael Salomon, ASC (Director of The Flood)