My first serious filmmaking mentor told me something I’ve never forgotten: “The best lens is the one you can’t afford.” He was talking about vintage glass. Specifically, about how Metabones Speedboosters let you adapt vintage cinema lenses to modern mirrorless cameras while gaining an extra stop of light. Here’s why that matters in 2026. What…
Six years ago, I paid $0 for an Avid Media Composer certification course. I thought it was the only professional option. Then DaVinci Resolve changed everything. Today, I edit everything from YouTube videos to documentary features on Resolve. I pay $0 for the software — the free version handles 95% of what most filmmakers need.…
The Sony FX3 is an incredible camera. But cameras don’t make images — lenses do. This is the lesson I learned three years into my FX3 ownership. The FX3 delivered incredible footage with whatever lens I attached. But it wasn’t until I built a considered prime lens kit that I understood what the camera was…
Last week, I was on a shoot where the director asked me to compare wireless mic systems. “Just tell me which one to buy,” she said. “I don’t care about the technical stuff.” I told her: “They both work. It depends on your workflow.” That’s not the answer she wanted, but it’s the honest one.…
Audio is half your video. Everyone knows this. Almost no one practices it. I learned this lesson the hard way. My first documentary got rejected from a film festival not because of the visuals, but because the interview audio was unusable. Wind noise, handling noise, distant subjects — it was a disaster. The reviewer wrote…
Let me tell you about the worst day of my professional life that was entirely caused by an ND filter. I was shooting an interview in Beirut — a humanitarian worker in a white office, talking about supply chain collapse. The window behind her was producing exactly the kind of soft directional light that makes…
Let me tell you about the shoot that changed how I think about budget LED lights. I was in Cox’s Bazar, shooting in a refugee settlement at night. The only light source was a single overhead fluorescent tube — the kind that makes everyone look jaundiced and dead behind the eyes. I pulled out a…
