DEFINITION - January 2020 - SAMPLE

BOOM AND REGENERATION UK PRODUCTION REACHES NEW HEIGHTS

January 2020

£4.99

THE END OF THE F***ING WORLD

The slow-burn indie that crackled into a cinematic hit

THE

RATIO ASPECT WHY SCALING IS THE SECRET SAUCE IN CATS

ALSO BSC EXPO PREVIEW | LE MANS ’66 | THE WITCHER INSIDE SIGMA FP CAM | THE NEW VISUALISERS | CAMERA LISTINGS

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W E LC O M E

BRIGHT PUBLISHING LTD, BRIGHT HOUSE, 82 HIGH STREET, SAWSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE CB22 3HJ UK EDITORIAL Editor Julian Mitchell julianmitchell@bright-publishing.com Staff writer Chelsea Fearnley Contributor Adam Duckworth Chief sub editor Beth Fletcher Senior sub editor Siobhan Godwood Sub editor Felicity Evans Junior sub editor Elisha Young ADVERTISING Sales director Matt Snow 01223 499453 mattsnow@bright-publishing.com Sales manager Krishan Parmar 01223 499462 krishanparmar@bright-publishing.com Key accounts Nicki Mills 01223 499457 nickimills@bright-publishing.com DESIGN Design director Andy Jennings Designer Bruce Richardson Ad production Man-Wai Wong PUBLISHING Managing directors Andy Brogden & Matt Pluck DIGITAL Head of Digital Content Daisy Dickinson Instagram @definitionmags Twitter @definitionmags Facebook @definitionmagazine MEDIA PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS OF

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His Dark Materials in production at Wolf Studios in Cardiff

WELCOME

I

t’s almost ridiculous to think that the news of Disney’s and Netflix’s wholesale takeover of Pinewood and Shepperton might be overshadowing the even bigger UK production story.

This is the regeneration of industrial spaces to production ones that is going on right now on our shores. It’s already happened in Canada, where a similar trend has been continuing for a few years, but now up and down the UK old industrial areas are being earmarked as new highend TV and film production locations.

Just a few of the new developments are Pentland Studios in Scotland, with an investment of £140 million, Belfast Harbour Studios in Northern Ireland, with a £20 million investment and Church Fenton Studios near Leeds, with a £12 million investment – ITV’s Victoria is already made at Church Fenton.

Recently Comcast, the new owners of Sky, announced that a huge new film and TV complex is to be built on a 32-acre site just a stone’s throw from Elstree, making the area a major draw for American streaming production. And according to the BFI, last year production spend in the UK hit a new high of £7.9 billion. Whisper it if you dare: it’s boom time!

JULIAN MITCHELL EDITOR

Definition is published monthly by Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridge CB22 3HJ. No part of this magazine can be used without prior written permission of Bright Publishing Ltd. Definition is a registered trademark of Bright Publishing Ltd. The advertisements published in Definition that have been written, designed or produced by employees of Bright Publishing Ltd remain the copyright of Bright Publishing Ltd and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Prices quoted in sterling, euros and US dollars are street prices, without tax, where available or converted using the exchange rate on the day the magazine went to press.

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CONTENTS

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S E T- U P

06 TITLE SEQUENCE

Production shot from Netflix episodic The Witcher: gym-enhanced monster hunter.

08 SKY’S PRODUCTION STATEMENT

The huge UK broadcaster has announced a massive new production hub near Elstree.

10 BSC EXPO

Start planning your BSC Expo visit with our selective equipment preview.

DR A M A

16 THE RATIO ASPECT OF CATS

When you use oversized sets to visualise undersized cats, there’s fun to be had.

28 THE END OF THE F***ING WORLD Season 2 of the teenage angst tale with a darkening theme.

FE ATU RE S

39 CONTENT COUNTRY

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We may be in the grips of Brexit but we’re also experiencing an unprecedented production boom. How did it happen, are you a part of it and how long will it last?

50 LIGHTING LE MANS ’66

Trying to light as northern France while shooting in California requires some punch.

54 THE NEW VISUALISERS

These new image professionals previsualise and conceptualise to make you look good.

G E A R TE S TS

62 SIGMA FP CAMERA

Sigma could have the surprise package of 2020 with this, their new compact, full-frame camera.

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66 CAMERA LISTINGS

Our unique camera listings now offer kit essentials and recommended accessories.

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S E T- U P | B S C P R E V I E W

BSC EXPO 2020 O N E S TO WATC H

It’s wet, it’s cold but it’s one of the best. Here’s our first preview of what to expect at this year’s BSC expo in London

GRAB YOUR

COPY OF THE LATEST ISSUE OF

AT BSC 2020

SONY pro.sony/en_GB/ Sony’s high-end cinema camera, Venice, will be featuring v5.0 firmware. Since its launch in 2017, the camera has become a hugely popular choice for filmmakers and has been used on a wide range of highprofile productions in the UK and across the world, such as ITV’s fish-out-of-water drama of last year, Wild Bill.

Also on display is the PXW-FX9, the latest addition to Sony’s full frame line-up which includes Fast Hybrid AF, Dual Base ISO and S-Cinetone colour science. You can also see a selection of Sony’s Trimaster monitors for on-set and post-production applications, alongside audio equipment for location-based audio recording.

QUASAR SCIENCE quasarscience.com Quasar Science is showcasing its new RR100 and RR50 linear LED lights.

The design of these lights advances Quasar’s tubular form factor with a larger width, but retains the low-profile shape of the company’s legacy lights.

“We were asked to make a panel. But with the market saturated in panels, it did not help anyone to add another. So, we went in a different direction,” says Quasar Science CEO, Steven Strong.

Affectionately dubbed the “Double Rainbow”, the RR has two rows of pixels expanding animation and FX

capabilities, making it ideal for process car work and special lighting effects. And, with its trademark Swaptics interchangeable lens system, the RR can be fitted with the slim diffuser – which comes included – the Light Barrel large diffuser and the Light Magnifier projection lens.

In addition to wired DMX, the RR can be controlled with sACN, Artnet and controlled wirelessly by CRMX, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Like the Rainbow before it, the RR has integrated AC power supply and auxiliary DC input.

P+S TECHNIK pstechnik.de Celebrating its 30th birthday, P+S Technik is gifting BSC Expo an unveiling of its new designed primes. The primes are part of the Technovision 1.5x anamorphic lens series, which covers larger formats, and will join the already wellknown Evolution 2x lenses for Super 35mm.

Also on display is the Lenschecker, a small, compact and mobile tool to evaluate lenses by projection, and the newly launched Optica Magnus Xpanders which come in five different magnification factors.

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B S C P R E V I E W | S E T- U P

SENNA senna.hr

LEITZ leitz-cine.com

Senna is known for its Skybeast console, which is an advanced wireless lighting controller with a range of 300m for Skypanels, Kino Flo, DMG Lumiere, Senna lights and all other DMX lighting fixtures.

With six universes and over 3000 DMX channels, Skybeast controls all options of 96 SkyPanels and 192 Standard mode lights.

At this year’s BSC show, visitors can also test Senna Wall, a super powerful luminaire which gives over 90,000LUX at one metre, but with a very low power consumption of only 1600W. It can be powered with eight V-Mount batteries for over three hours and has the wireless control option of dimming and colour temperature.

The premium lens manufacturer Leitz (sister company to Leica AG) – renowned for its Thalia, M 8.0, Summilux-C and Summicron-C lenses – has just expanded its range with the delivery of its highly anticipated new large format Leitz Primes and Leitz Zooms.

The first sets arrived at CAMTEC, SANWA Cine Equipment Rental Company, Camalot Audiovisual Facilities, Ljud & Bildmedia AB, Keslow Camera, Technological Cinevideo Services (TCS) and at Creative Video Productions (CVP) for Futureworks Media.

The company is showcasing the lenses, available with PL- and LPL-Mount options including metadata interface Cooke /i and Arri LDS-2, together with its new achromatic diopter Macrolux 114, which was has been added to the product line-up to even improve close focus abilities of Leitz Primes and Leitz Zooms.

Like Macrolux 95, the Macrolux 114 is available with strengths +0,5, +1 and +2.

They will fit lenses with a 114mm front diameter and are stackable to enhance the effect without adding any chromatic aberration to the lens.

ZEISS zeiss.co.uk Zeiss is showcasing its large portfolio of full-frame lenses, including its new Supreme Prime Radiance lenses, which are on display for the first time in the UK. Under regular lighting, these lenses render like modern cinematography lenses. But with the appropriate lighting, however, they start to flare. This is all down to their newly developed lens coating, T blue. It enables filmmakers to create consistent and controlled flares, while still offering large format coverage, a high speed of T1.5, robustness and smooth and reliable focus.

The Supreme Prime Radiances lenses are produced on a pre-order basis only. Orders are open until 31 March 2020 and shipping of the complete set starts in April 2020.

CREAMSOURCE creamsource.com Creamsource is showcasing the latest in LED lighting technologies for film and TV production.

On stand 330, visitors can see its Creamsource Sky, the original highpower full spectrum softsource now with optional optics. These include Creamsource Micro, with a compact weatherproof form factor that fits into small spaces; and Creamsource Micro Colour, featuring calibrated RGBW LEDs, as well as white light in any

CCT from 2200K to 15,000K. Creamsource SpaceX is also on display.

This 1200W, full colour top-light has punch optic options that boasts an array of six LED engines, cooled by an efficient yet quiet fan system. It also incorporates an integrated lightweight power supply, doing away with bulky and heavy ballasts.

Alongside these lights, Creamsource is showing its micro multi yoke and micro hand grips.

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D R A M A | C AT S

A GRAND

SCALE This megamusical has now transferred its feline fantasy to the silver screen, but Cats has caused controversy from the very first trailer...

W O R D S J U L I A N M I TC H E L L / P I C T U R E S U N I V E R S A L P I C T U R E S

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C AT S | D R A M A

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fter 8000 performances in London’s West End and over 7000 on New York’s Broadway (and many worldwide productions), it’s time for Cats the movie. There is plenty of precedent for a successful musical to be turned in to a cinematic experience: Oliver!, Chicago, Les Misérables, The Sound of Music, Hairspray, Grease... there’s a big list.

But Cats is different. First, it’s primarily a dance musical and it’s just cats, so you have the anthropomorphic hurdle to cross. And then, how do you stage it?

But all these questions were ones already served up back in 1981 when Cats first opened at the New London Theatre and the following year at the Winter

The initial concept for the movie was to bring the world down to the size of cats Garden Theatre on Broadway. Definition talked to cinematographer Chris Ross while he was still grading the 1900 shots from the movie (he was actually balancing Rumpleteazer’s white levels at the time).

When asked how he got the job on Cats, Ross recalls: “I had finished a movie called Yesterday for Danny Boyle and, behind the scenes, Danny and Tom [Hooper] had a conversation, and I was invited to meet Tom and have a chat.

“One of the things I like to do to trigger conversation is to bring some

references to the meeting, so I made a list of things I thought were good for us to talk about. I knew that the film was set in London’s Soho of the late twenties, early thirties – the idea being that it was the back streets of Soho that hadn’t been redeveloped at the time. I’d seen some concept art that production designer Eve Stewart had done, so I pulled together some references for a rain-soaked, neonand-gas-lit London street of the time. After reading the script, I also read the original TS Eliot poems and read a little bit about

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D R A M A | T H E E N D O F T H E F * * * I N G WO R L D

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LINGERING LOOK Our favourite teen criminals are finally back – or, at least, one of them definitely is. We speak to DOP Benedict Spence about how he shot Series 2 of The End of the F***ing World WORDS CHELSE A FE ARNLE Y / PICTURES STUDIOCANAL S. A .S

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A DV E R T I S E M E N T F E AT U R E | S A M S U N G

SLOW MOTION

LOVES FAST STORAGE The Samsung Portable SSD X5 can easily fit into any production, as John Keedwell, a high-speed camera expert and video production mentor, proves

THERE’S SLOW MOTION video and then there’s a million frames-per-second car crash analysis super-slow motion.

Videographer John Keedwell used to shoot the latter and understands the need for robust and fast storage for both.

While he’s not in the car crashing business anymore, he thought it would be interesting to test the Samsung Portable SSD X5 in that way.

“If I’d had a Samsung Portable SSD X5 back then it would have been easier to get the extreme slow motion processed.

Previously, we needed special flash drives to record the vast frame numbers, which were expensive and you would only achieve about one second of capture. With the Samsung portable drive, you could’ve recorded the frames and got the footage to the labs much quicker.”

Keedwell also highlights another use for the portable drive: “You could use it for other scientific analysis videos and for the military where you are able to track gun shell and bullet rotation.”

He adds: “Normally that kind of analysis is low resolution as they just want to see what happens, but if you want to use it for movies you would need maybe 8K at a large amount of frames per second.

But, having that kind of performance from something so small and powerful opens up all kinds of possibilities for its use.”

IMAGE The Samsung Portable SSD X5 housed in a typical footage transfer station

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Fittingly, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 is inspired by the shape of a supercar. The 150g drive is also equipped with state-ofthe-art Thunderbolt 3 technology and a NVMe interface. With housing and internal protection guard frame made by a durable yet light magnesium, it withstands drops of up to two metres.

NON-SCIENTIFIC SLOW MOTION Slow motion for the rest of us – around 300 frames per second – always looks good, better than 24 or 25p usually, but as resolution grows, the need for fast storage keeps pace with it.

“Unlike the crash testing, you would usually want longer than the one second as you might miss the moment you are shooting for. So, you need a lot of data going down very quickly to your storage. Also, it might need to be transferred quickly to a post-production studio,” explains Keedwell.

“This is where the Samsung Portable SSD X5 has an advantage as more cameras can now record directly to it. You record directly to the drive and then take the drive that has all the original shots on with you – it just feels like the most modern way to work.”

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“You could use it for military analysis videos where you track shell and bullet rotation” The need for small, fast and robust storage is only increasing, according to Keedwell, which is why it’s important to invest in something like the Samsung portable drive to future-proof your storage. “8K is becoming something of a standard, but they are already talking about 16K. With a helping of high frame rate cinematography, you’ve got huge demands on storage going forward,” he says.

With technological synergies between NVMe and Thunderbolt 3 technology, the Samsung Portable SSD X5’s exceptional speed offers read/write speeds respectively up to 2,800/2,300MB/s. Keedwell sees this super write speed as a huge advantage for multi-camera operations.

“Just think about anything that needs a multi-camera approach, especially with these higher resolutions and you have a need for fast storage, such as the Samsung Portable SSD X5,” he says. “Motion or performance capture for instance, where a number of cameras are dealing with different movements or varieties of ‘bullet time’ sequences where many cameras are synched to record high-resolution frames.

There are also new capture techniques like

volumetrics where everything within a space is recorded, camera numbers in those instances are usually more than 100. The Samsung portable drive’s robustness and speed make it a great solution.”

With thermal management technology including Dynamic Thermal Guard and mechanical solution, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 maintains optimal temperature by operating speed. It’s built to absorb working heat through heat sink to prevent overheating, keeping surface temperature below 45℃.

BEST PRACTICE TRANSFER Keedwell runs the Epics Academy, which seeks to help creators produce their own videos and then market them online. His experience as a videographer allows him to see how the Samsung Portable SSD X5 can help in the basic process of making videos.

“I can immediately see that the Samsung portable drive could help even on a client approval level. For instance, if you had a client who needed the entire shoot quickly as he or she needed to travel internationally, then this data rate makes it one of the best transfer drives around.”

He adds: “You don’t have to worry about supplying all the Raw files as you’ll be able to get a clone drive finished almost immediately. Normally a client will want a copy and be off to the airport, that’s just the way the business is at a small production company level.”

Of course, with the Samsung Portable SSD X5 you also get robust security as there is accompanying software that securely protects your data by providing optional password protection through AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

As we’ve found in our other case studies, once the Samsung Portable SSD X5 is in the hands of professionals, they easily see how it could work within a production and how it could turbocharge the process.

MORE INFORMATION:

samsung.com/uk/portable-ssd

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BACK IN THE EARLY NINETIES, THE UK FILM BUSINESS WAS IN TROUBLE DUE TO LACK OF INVESTMENT – BUT HEADING TOWARDS THE 2020S, THINGS COULDN’T BE MORE DIFFERENT W O R D S J U L I A N M I TC H E L L / P I C T U R E S VA R I O U S

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DRAMA | LIGHTING LE MANS

LIGHTING W O R D S J U L I A N M I TC H E L L / P I C T U R E S M I C H A E L B AU M A N , LU X L I G H T I N G / 20T H C E N T U R Y F OX

Shooting a movie where California substituted for Le Mans in France meant controlling the harsh SoCal sun

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LIGHTING LE MANS | DRAMA

LE MANS A

s befits a company based in a place called Sun Valley, CA, Lux Lighting’s Michael Bauman talks a lot about the light in California – in particular, the trouble it can cause on-set when it comes to getting the right light for particular types of shoot.

“We are out here in California and we get a lot of light,” he says. “If you are doing car interiors and the look you need demands a very punchy source to get the contrast in the right spot… We were having a lot of trouble finding something.”

The movie in question was Ford v Ferrari (later called Le Mans ‘66), directed

IMAGES One of the many car camera rigs in the movie – this time with Creamsource lighting to punch in some control

by James Mangold and starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon, depicting the famous battle between the previously dominant Ferrari and Ford at the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1966. It was shot entirely in California, with the Willow Springs International Motorsports Park in Rosamund standing in for the famous French circuit – which meant dealing with the powerful California sunlight.

PUNCH LIGHT Enter the Creamsource Micro bicolour.

“That had enough firepower to be really effective, and was really a perfect fit for

If you are doing car interiors in California, you need a very punchy light source JA N UA RY 2020 | D E F I N I T I O N

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F E AT U R E | T H E V I S UA L I S E R S

THE AGE OF THE

VISUALISER YOU ARE A BUILDER OF WORLDS, YOU SIT ASTRIDE MULTI-CINEMATIC DISCIPLINES WITH THE IMAGINATION TO FORESEE COMPLICATED BUT EXTRAORDINARY MOVIE SEQUENCES: YOU ARE A VISUALISER W O R D S J U L I A N M I TC H E L L / P I C T U R E S T H E T H I R D F LO O R , H B O A N D I T V

P

revisualising, or previs, is hardly new. It was originally a modern way to animate storyboards, which itself was a traditional way of mocking up scenes that needed some extra help to imagine. The shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho featured over 100 cuts so had to be carefully pre-planned.

In 2002 David Fincher’s Panic Room had beautifully previs’d moves that allowed the camera to navigate from sleeping homeowner upstairs to intruders looking through the kitchen windows downstairs in one sweeping, hypnotic shot from one

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to the other. There are hundreds of other examples but these two stand out in the evolution of the art.

THE THIRD FLOOR 15 years ago a new company was formed out of Lucasfilm; it was called The Third Floor (TTF), after where the founders worked in Skywalker Ranch. They were six guys who were working on Star Wars: Episode III and were pioneering the ‘visualisation’ process and pipeline at the same time. Alex Webster, MD of The Third Floor UK, explains the further origins of the company.

“It was the first time that using CG animation allowed director and DOP to really plan what it was they were going to shoot on a particular day, what would be CG and what would be live action. That would allow them to make early decisions thereby saving time, money and resource on set.”

The company has grown from that point from its core business of feature films, crossing over to work on projects including television, games, VR and themed attractions. Webster brings us up to date. “About eight years ago Framestore in London was embarking on early development on the film Gravity with Alfonso Cuaron. They were using a creative process, a very technical one which would allow the filmmakers to really define how they were going to make this so-called impossible-to-make movie.

“William Sargent, who is the CEO of Framestore, knew that they needed some kind of extra support in that process by bolstering the previs part of the crew. He got hold of Chris at TTF in LA and they deployed a handful of artists to come over to London to work alongside the guys at Framestore in the early pre-production phases. From that, the relationship grew and Third Floor London is now eight years old and is a joint venture between Framestore and The Third Floor LA.

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Most of our guys come from an animation background; rarely do they come specifically from a VFX background as you might assume “We’re now a team of about 100 people and our core business is with the major studios – Disney, Warners, Marvel, Lucas Films – as well as doing a lot more work now with the likes of Netflix and Amazon on the streaming platforms.”

BRIDGING ROLE

The Third Floor sits somewhere between traditional pre-production, early concepts,

art department, scripts, storyboarders and the live action and VFX teams.

“Paradoxically we work underneath visual effect supervisors but most of our work is with the production team,” says Webster.

“We work closely with DOPs, directors, art directors, production designers and stunt coordinators to inform the creative choices around shot composition, editorial structure and camera language as well

as helping solve technical problems as to how complex sequences or single shots are going to be captured on the day and in CG. “We provide an essential sandbox of tools which allows those department heads to play and make creative decisions in a highly inexpensive, disposable way. This allows them to iterate, change, to consider different options in a way that is ultimately throwaway, meaning that you are making those decisions before you get into the really expensive part of the process, which is on-set and in a VFX pipeline.”

A call will go out to The Third Floor from a director, VFX supervisor or producer early in the process of making a film, when they’ve got a script and

IMAGES A finished scene from the Beyond The Wall episode in Season 7 of Game Of Thrones; and a virtual camera in the previs (right)

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USER REVIEW | SIGMA FP

SMALL BUT PRICE £1999/$1900

LARGE

The world’s smallest large format mirrorless camera that shoots Raw video internally is a hugely capable product of the L-Mount alliance W O R D S A DA M D U C K W O R T H / P I C T U R E S A DA M D U C K W O R T H / S I G M A

hen Panasonic got together with Leica and Sigma to announce the alliance to share the full-frame L-Mount, most presumed Leica and Panasonic would continue their relationship and make high-end cameras while Sigma would produce independent L-Mount lenses to fit them. This would give buyers of the new Panasonic S series or Leica’s SL mirrorless cameras instant access to a whole range of top-quality primes and zooms, available for more

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ABOVE The Sigma fp mirrorless camera, with a full-frame sensor and video recording to CinemaDNG Raw files

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affordable prices than the existing Leica glass.

But Sigma also makes cameras.

Its range of unusual SD Quattro and DP Quattro mirrorless compacts have a very different type of sensor called a Foveon, and haven’t had any real impact on the filmmaking market, but signal the know-how and facilities to build modern cameras – and a love of doing things a little bit differently.

All this has converged to produce the new Sigma fp, the

world’s smallest full-frame mirrorless camera, and the only one to shoot CinemaDNG Raw files internally. And to an SD card, no less, rather than pricey CFast, CFexpress or XQD media.

STILLS OR VIDEO It’s certainly a quirky camera, one that’s designed for switching between stills and cine use, and this choice is underlined by the large and obvious button on the top plate marked ‘Cine’ and ‘Still’. Choose

SIGMA FP | USER REVIEW

“A QUIRKY CAMERA, ONE DESIGNED FOR SWITCHING CINE TO STILLS” whichever you are shooting, and the menus and configuration change totally, making it easy to switch between the two.

While many mirrorless cameras definitely feel like stills cameras with added video functionality, the Sigma actually feels like it’s the other way around. Instead of the body being tailored towards stills shooters (with the more conventional PASM mode dial and flash hotshoe), it prioritises video Raw, a screen with cooling vents to stop the sensor overheating during extended video shooting, and buttons under the rear screen that allow you to set colour modes and tones. That’s not to say it’s not a good stills camera, but it’s an even better filmmaking camera.

Even the strap eyelets aren’t the normal lugs for a camera strap.

Instead, they are standard ¼-20 threaded holes into which you screw the included strap lugs if you

want them, or use them to bolt on standard video accessories like rigs and cages. If you do want to use flash, the included Sigma HU-11 hotshoe adapter screws into the left side of the camera and has a clamp to firmly fasten a mini HDMI lead. This clamp can be a bit small for certain leads, so you may end up buying a more slender version if you want to link it up to an external monitor.

To use the hotshoe adapter, you need to take off a rubber cover from the side of the body. This is totally removed to allow the electronic connections to be made and, unfortunately, it’s easy to lose.

The other connectors for the USB-C socket and mic input are hinged, so there is no chance of losing them.

They are a fiddly fit, though.

FORM FACTOR The rest of the camera is small and minimalist, with few external

ABOVE The Sigma fp is a good stills camera but it’s an even better filmmaking camera

controls. But this can work well for filming as, for example, you can set the shutter speed to a 180° shutter angle so it always sets a speed of twice the frame rate, using the ageold formula that has stood the test of time. Then all you need to do is set the ISO and aperture. We used the compact Sigma 45mm f/2.8 DG DN lens, which has an aperture ring, so it all felt old-school and natural.

This is a mid-range lens from Sigma’s Contemporary range rather than the flagship Art range of DSLR lenses or even cine primes, but its small size made the camera truly pocketable.

The back of the camera has a button labelled QS for the Quick Select menu, which is a great way to set all the most-used settings. Hit QS, move the thumb pad wheel to change between settings, then spin it to alter those settings. In Cine mode, you can change the video format, frame rate, time code, shutter angle, aperture, ISO, colour and whitebalance. If you want more options, the AEL button takes you deeper into the right menu. It’s simple

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SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET Breakdown of all the best bits

THE CATIFICATION If you’ve seen the Cats movie, you’re probably wondering about the fur

AVENUE 5 Armando Iannucci’s new futuristic space-tourism comedy on HBO

NEXT GEN CAPTURE All the latest capture techniques, both real world and virtual

ON SALE 30 JANUARY 2020

ALSO AVAILABLE ON THE APP STORE

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