ABSTRACT
Complaints about the “video look” of professional digital formats are centered on its “hardness” and “coldness”; this aesthetic is the result of a combination of factors, from the idiosyncracies of how sensors react to light and render color, to the encoding algorithms and bit depth of the format. Things get even more complicated when dealing with DSLRs, mirrorless, and semi-professional video cameras, because they often use their own proprietary codecs, designed to complement their unique hardware and software, resulting in each producing their own distinctive version of the “digital look”. Smith made one key decision from the onset, however: he would use Cooke S4 lenses to counteract the “hard, fierce, and unforgiving” digital look. Among many professional cinematographers, Zeiss and Cooke are considered among the best cinema lenses available, but they are also seen as having fundamentally different visual qualities.
