Why You Need a Mattebox

Posted on November 10, 2011 in Cinematography | No Comments

In this video Cinevate answers a reoccurring question from some DSLR video newcomers – Why would I need a mattebox?

Click here to read the full blog post (with side-by-side stills) and more detailed breakdown.

CORRECTION* – At 1:41 in the video Luke puts in an ND 9 and says it gives him more depth of field, when he actually meant ’shallower depth of field’

It all boils down to control – control over your image by manipulating the light coming into the lens. Now, we’re certainly not the first to write on the subject but what we’ve collected here is a sample platter of video and stills to show images with and without control methods the Mattebox provides. Naturally, we’re using our Titan Swing Away Mattebox and our DSLR Core Package in the video. And, free hugs to anyone who catches our attempt to reference (parody?) a recent car film…

I didn’t talk specifically to the filters, so to clarify, we used the following in the video; Tiffen Ultra Linear 4×4 Polarizer, Tiffen Clear/ND.6 Soft Edge 4×4 Gradient, and Tiffen ND.9 Neutral Density 4×4.