Cinematographer

A cinematographer (from 'cinema photographer') is one photographing with a motion picture camera (the art and science of which is known as cinematography). The title is generally equivalent to director of photography (DP or DoP), used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and techical decisions related to the image. The cinematographer is sometimes also the camera operator. The term cinematographer has been a point of contention for some time now; some professionals insist that it only applies when the director of photography and camera operator are the same person, although this is far from being uniformly the case. To most, cinematographer and director of photography are interchangeable terms.

Noted Cinematographers

This section is for extremely ground-breaking, renowned, and exceptional cinematographers. Please do not add names without careful consideration of the accomplishments of those listed here, most of whom have been well recognized by their peers over a long stretch of time or work.

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• Nestor Almendros
• John Alton
• Billy Bitzer
• Jack Cardiff
• Christopher Challis
• Michael Chapman
• Raoul Coutard
• Dean Cundey
• William H. Daniels
• Roger Deakins
• Christopher Doyle
• A. A. Englander
• Freddie Francis
• Karl Freund
• Ron Fricke
• Tak Fujimoto
• Conrad Hall
• Jack Hildyard
• James Wong Howe
• Janusz Kaminski
• Darius Khondji
• László Kovács
• Subrata Mitra
• Kazuo Miyagawa
• Robby Muller
• Sven Nykvist
• Roger Pratt
• Rodrigo Prieto
• Robert Richardson
• Joseph Ruttenberg
• Douglas Slocombe
• John Seale
• Vittorio Storaro
• Gregg Toland
• John Toll
• Geoffrey Unsworth
• Roy H. Wagner
• David Watkin
• Haskell Wexler
• Billy Williams
• Gordon Willis
• Freddie Young Frederick A. Young, BSC
• Vilmos Zsigmond