About a month ago, I announced that I have been working on my Guide For Capturing Cinematic Images With Your DSLR, and after countless hours of prepping, shooting and editing, it is finally complete and available as of today! The guide itself is an extremely in depth 82 minute tutorial video that acts like a boot-camp, covering everything you need to know from A – Z with regards to capturing a cinematic image. 

Many of you had pre-ordered the guide last month, and first and foremost I want to say thank you. I greatly appreciate your support and interest in this video tutorial.

There are so many video tutorials out there that attempt to break down and explain the various components of cinematography, but I have never come across any that focus primarily on how to achieve the ‘film look’, which is why I created this video guide. While many of the topics covered (such as setting your exposure, stabilizing your camera and post-workflows) are pertinent to any type of shooting, most of the chapters (such as lighting, framing and color grading to name a few) are very heavily geared towards the cinematic look.

I have truly worked long and hard to densely pack in every last tidbit of information that I think you will need to know to get started on your cinematic journey. This guide could have easily been 3 hours long, but after trimming away all the fat and leaving just the essentials, it is down to just under an hour and a half. Over the course of the video, we cover the following topics, broken down by chapter:

1. Picking The Right Camera

2. Recording Formats

3. Camera Profiles

4. Exposure

5. Lenses

6. Depth of Field

7. Rolling Shutter

8. Lighting

9. Framing & Composition

10. Camera Movement

11. Stabilization

12. Post-Workflow

13. Color Grading

14. Finishing

This guide is truly going to be beneficial for just about anyone shooting digitally, not just DSLR shooters. While I do demonstrate primarily with DSLR footage/cameras, the fundamental principles outlined in this guide are universal and will apply no matter what camera you’re shooting on. Lighting a beautiful image, choosing the right lens, color grading your footage, or any of the other critical topics that I cover in this guide are essential to master no matter what your camera of choice.

Here are a few frame grabs from the guide:

My Approach

Just about any of the chapters in this video could have been their own self contained tutorial. But rather than breaking things apart and releasing all of these chapters as individual videos, I felt that it was really important to release them all together since they are all so dependant on each other. I learned how to shoot, edit, and color by actually getting my hands dirty and learning every last step in the process inside and out, and that mentality is largely reflected in this tutorial. By touching on every last element in the chain (from choosing your camera all the way through to coloring and finishing), this guide will give you a massive jump start and get your well on your way to capturing filmic images.

There’s no question that actually getting out in the field and shooting is one the best ways to grow as a filmmaker. But in order to get the most out of your time when actually shooting (and save yourself a lot of headaches along the way), you will want to be as prepared as possible so that you can avoid some of the common mistakes that everyone encounters. That’s the purpose of this video: To get you up and running as soon as possible so that you can go out and pick the right camera, shoot with it, and process your footage so it looks fantastic. I spent years teaching myself how to shoot through trial and error, and only wish that I could have saved myself countless hours of frustration by learning some of the techniques that are outlined in this tutorial.

If you would like to order the guide, you can do so for only $65 by clicking the link below. Thank you all so much for your support and I truly hope that this guide can help many of you capture even more pristine and filmic images.