170 Film Camera Quotes

Following is our list of film camera quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about camera and photography.

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Famous Film Camera Quotes

With all its technical sophistication, the photographic camera remains a coarse device compared to the human hand and brain. — Claude Levi-Strauss

I still love taking pictures with Polaroid film. For me, it offers the most beautiful way of capturing reality and transferring it onto a flat piece of paper. — Helena Christensen

Since a camera is something too heavy for women and initially made for men, you need a good cameraman. — Mitra Farahani

A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. — Orson Welles

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. - Dorothea Lange

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. — Dorothea Lange

The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera. — W. Eugene Smith

Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle. — Robert Bresson

The camera can photograph thought. — Dirk Bogarde

Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world. — Patti Smith

Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself — Michael Haneke

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories. - Theodore Levitt

Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories. — Theodore Levitt

Pain is temporary, film is forever. — Michael J. Fox

The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way. — Margaret Bourke-White

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! - Ansel Adams

The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! — Ansel Adams

Short Film Camera Quotes

  • The digital camera is a great invention because it allows us to reminisce. Instantly. — Demetri Martin
  • I had a love for photography, which of course rolled into cinematography. — Scoot McNairy
  • Everyone has a photographic Memory, some just don't have film. — Steven Wright
  • [A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was. — Edwin Land
  • Films have a certain place in a certain time period. Technology is forever. — Hedy Lamarr
  • The important thing is not the camera but the eye. — Alfred Eisenstaedt
  • Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera. — Yousuf Karsh
  • It's more fun if you can control things like lighting and make special effects in the darkroom. — Lacey Chabert
  • Only the camera seems to be really capable of describing modern life. — Alexander Rodchenko
  • The camera can photograph thought. It's better than a paragraph of sweet polemic. — Dirk Bogarde

Film Camera Image Quotes

Film camera quote Life is like a camera focus on whats important and youll capture it perfectly.
Life is like a camera focus on whats important and youll capture it perfectly.

Photography And Film Quotes

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. — Ansel Adams

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. — Imogen Cunningham

The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed. — Anne Geddes

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective. — Irving Penn

Ultimately photography is about who you are. It's the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit. — Leonard Freed

To me if there's an achievement to lighting and photography in a film it's because nothing stands out, it all works as a piece. And you feel that these actors are in this situation and the audience is not thrown by a pretty picture or by bad lighting. — Roger Deakins

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. — Richard Avedon

Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times...I just shoot at what interests me at that moment. — Elliott Erwitt

... the reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality. — Lev Manovich

I was drawn to photography as an extension of film, and the beauty of film is that it's a sensuous, fetishistic medium. — Anton Yelchin

Camera And Photography Quotes

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time. - Robert Doisneau

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time. — Robert Doisneau

My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport. — Steve McCurry

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words. — Elliott Erwitt

You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver) — Gordon Parks

There is 3 key things for good photography: the camera,lighting and... Photoshop — Tyra Banks

It seems positively unnatural to travel without taking a camera along... The very activity of taking pictures is soothing and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. — Susan Sontag

Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject. — Margaret Bourke-White

A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space. — Garry Winogrand

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart. — Arnold Newman

Filmmaking Quotes

As they say in Corsica... Goodbye! — Gene Wilder

I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera. — Gordon Parks

Tagore once said - art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful. — Ritwik Ghatak

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed. — Gordon Parks

We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who's watching my movie. — Donald Glover

And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography. — Gus Van Sant

Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn't the beginning or end for filmmaking. — Robert Duvall

Living consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the moment. — Sidney Poitier

Love is all a matter of timing. It's no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. — Wong Kar-wai

Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. — Satyajit Ray

Camera Quotes

Life is like a camera. Focus on what's important. Capture the good times. And if things don't work out, just take another shot. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while. — Gene Wilder

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities. — Saul Leiter

Sometimes I feel as if we are all trapped in a movie. We know our lines, where to walk, how to act, only there is no camera. Yet, we can't break out of the movie. And it's a bad one. — Charles Bukowski

I plan to join the 'SNL' band as a maraca player and stand behind saxophonist Lenny Pickett. That way they will at least cut to me before commercial breaks. I'll be sure to look right into camera. — John Mulaney

My dream concept is that I have a camera and I am trying to photograph what is essentially invisible. And every once in a while I get a glimpse of her and I grab that picture. — Leonard Nimoy

I would watch 'Punk'd' or 'Candid Camera' - I love the shows, but also I would feel bad about the people that were getting pranked. — James Murray

It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera — Sebastiao Salgado

People think we're always pranking them or that we're constantly on camera. — James Murray

People think that all cameramen do is point the camera at things, but it's a heck of a lot more complicated than that. — Chris Elliott

Cinematography Quotes

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. — Sergio Leone

Cinematography is infinite in its possibilities... much more so than music or language. — Conrad Hall

Cinematography is a writing with images in mouvement and with sounds. - Robert Bresson

Cinematography is a writing with images in mouvement and with sounds. — Robert Bresson

When you move the camera, or you do a shot like the crane down (in Shawshank) with them standing on the edge of the roof, then it's got to mean something. You've got to know why you're doing it; it's got to be for a reason within the story, and to further the story. — Roger Deakins

Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I've never been bored. — Dustin Hoffman

Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator. — Vsevolod Pudovkin

There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor? — Mary Astor

I'm mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here — Kishore Kumar

There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers. And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don't see. — Gordon Willis

All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story. And without story, there is no screenplay. — Syd Field

Film-making Quotes

The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible. — Tom Cruise

I like serious films, the moneymaking blockbusters that don't make any kind of sense and John Carpenter films. — Pam Grier

I like the idea of making big budget films with a heart. I like graphic novels more than comic books. — Matthew Vaughn

We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated. — Brad Bird

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. - Marlon Brando

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. — Marlon Brando

I want to make a film about a factory worker. - Richard Linklater

I want to make a film about a factory worker. — Richard Linklater

To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script. — Alfred Hitchcock

Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die. — Francois Truffaut

I grew up watching monster movies and horror movies, which I felt were like fairy tales and I think this always spoke to me. Something about that is symbolism - the beauty and the magic which helps me work with film and start making modern fairy tales. — Tim Burton

The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson

Film Production Quotes

When we film the TV show, it's with a hidden camera so we don't get to see how fans react to what we are doing and when fans watch it at home. — James Murray

The videos take months of prep. A lot of them take four to five days of relentless filming. There's a reason other people don't do what I do. — MrBeast

I think it would be really fun to film a drama in a foreign country. If the opportunity presents itself, I want to film a Chinese production. — Lee Min-ho

Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films. — Atom Egoyan

I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves. — Roger Deakins

I am a product of Indian cinema; I've grown up watching Indian films ever since I can remember. And song and dance is part of our lives, it's part of our culture we wake up to songs, we sleep to lullabies, you know, we celebrate every religious and traditional function with music. — Karan Johar

You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people's interest in a movie and like that better than worrying about showing the tricks behind the curtain. — Jay Roach

My first film goes into production in October. It's called White Boy Shuffle and it's based on a novel about a young black kid and it's sort of reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye. — Ryan Phillippe

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer. — Spike Lee

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise. — J. J. Johnson

Photography Quotes

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person. — Saul Leiter

Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. - Ziad K. Abdelnour

Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical. - Trent Parke

I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical. — Trent Parke

Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence. — Eadweard Muybridge

You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either. — Galen Rowell

I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. — Mark Rothko

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do. — Sally Mann

The biggest cliche in Photography is Sunrise and Sunset. — Catherine Opie

The body says what words cannot. — Martha Graham

Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities. — Michael Kenna

Digital Cameras Quotes

It's disgusting. Why would people idolize someone who doesn’t do anything and saying you're a model/photographer with a digital camera and photoshop does not count as an artist. — Ryan Ross

The main reason I went to digital was because I got time-lapse, video, and still images all in one camera. Having a minimal amount of gear is really important for someone who wants to walk around. That allowed me to have this flexibility to document things in different ways. — Andy Goldsworthy

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies. — Bill Gates

Small, portable digital cameras that exceed the performance of an off-the-shelf Nikon using 35mm slide film are further away from current reality than the proposed NASA manned Mars mission, although I expect both to happen sometime during my lifetime. — Galen Rowell

I was mentioning with the digital camera, maybe this new fashion of filmmaking gives a closer look of what life may be like. But it's still nothing but a copy. — Abbas Kiarostami

I think that film is still an artform and it doesn't really matter if you're using a digital camera or a film camera. — Vilmos Zsigmond

When we were kids, growing up in the sixties, the only images we had of ourselves were either still photographs or 8mm movies.... Now we have video, digital cameras, MP3s, and a million other ways to document ourselves. But the still photograph continues to hold a sense of mystery and awe to me. — Catherine Opie

Fifty years after we undertook to make the first synthetic polarizers we find them the essential layer in digital liquid-crystal. And thirty four years after we undertook to make the first instant camera and film, our kind of photography has become ubiquitous. — Edwin Land

I even agree with the new digital ways of filmmaking, where you don't even have physical film in the camera, but to be honest, I wouldn't want to use it. — J. Lee Thompson

A lot of the stuff in 'Speed Racer' has never been done before, from it having a multi-tone, to it having a retro-cool family movie, to having the photo-realism with the CG-backgrounds and infinite focus the way they worked with these digital cameras, to even the color experimentation. — Emile Hirsch

Film History Quotes

Look, people have been filming fights since the beginning of time. — Dana White

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct. — Charlie Hunnam

When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980. — Jacques Rivette

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. — Mario Puzo

I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. — Lou Gehrig

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film. — Ken Loach

The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history. — Louise Brooks

It's a required part of your film history to know who Woody is. His movies are so wonderful, and not just funny but so insightful about human behavior. — Scarlett Johansson

Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! — Bram Stoker

From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it. — Mohsen Makhmalbaf

People Writing About Film Camera

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Read quotes by Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss
quotes on education, love and life

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Read quotes by Helena Christensen

Helena Christensen
quotes on love, life and beauty

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Read quotes by Orson Welles

Orson Welles
quotes on politics

200 1817
Read quotes by Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange
quotes on her work

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Read quotes by W. Eugene Smith

W. Eugene Smith
quotes on art, life and photography

36 370
Read quotes by Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson
quotes on life

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More Film Camera Quotes

Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat. — Phillip Noyce

What’s really important is storytelling. None of it matters if it doesn’t support the story. — Wally Pfister

My dad gave my brother and I a camera to film our football games when we were 10 years old so we could see how we could get better. Then one day, we decided to pick up the camera and film whatever we were doing. — Jake Paul

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all. — Stanley Kubrick

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they're missing the key element. — Herb Ritts

Neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures; it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to life. Art contains the allied ideas of making and begetting, of being master of one's craft and able to create. Without these properties no art exists and no photographic art can come into being — Helmut Gernsheim

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum. — Ansel Adams

A saucer flew right over (us), put down three landing gears, and landed out on the dry lakebed. (The cameramen) went out there with their cameras toward the UFO.... I had chance to hold (the film) up to the window. Good close-up shots. There was no doubt in my mind that it was made someplace other than on this earth. — Gordon Cooper

Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create — Robert Bresson

When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself. — Steven Spielberg

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. — Francois Truffaut

Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again. — Jean Reno

Most people stiffen with self-consciousness when they pose for a photograph. Lighting and fine camera equipment are useless if the photographer cannot make them drop the mask, at least for a moment, so he can capture on his film their real, undistorted personality and character. — Philippe Halsman

Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts. — Minor White

I started working in front of the camera for the first time when I was 15 years old. I joined a soap opera. We filmed in Brooklyn and I would skip class to shoot my scenes. It was terrifying and I entirely self-conscious in front of the camera. — Paul Wesley

I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera. — Helmut Newton

I do photography and I studied film at school. So I've always really enjoyed that and I've got an eye for camera angles I guess. I've never taken that into filming wildlife. — Asa Butterfield

I got a job in the tear-sheets department, ripping up magazines like People, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Time, and delivering the editorial pages.... So I began to use a camera to make fake photographs of the ads. By re-photographing a magazine page and then developing the film in a cheap lab, the photos came out very strange. — Richard Prince

In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies... Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera; I wanted to see what was going on. — Tobin Bell

At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back. — Darren Aronofsky

You don't make a photograph just with a camera — Ansel Adams

I am against great themes and great subjects... You can't film an idea. The camera is an instrument for recording physical impact. — Jean Renoir

I never envisioned myself being a film star at all. Most people know that pro wrestling is a little bit of an accident for me. I never really had any real aspirations of being in front of a camera. — Roddy Piper

It's much simpler to be tortured on camera or to be filmed losing your mind. Whereas a script that has characters who are honest, witty and genuine is often much harder to act. — Ellen Page

When I start a film, I can sort of shut my eyes, sit somewhere quiet and imagine the movie finished. I can imagine the camera angles, I can even imagine the type of music. Without knowing the tune, I can imagine the type of music it needs to be. — Peter Jackson

When i've done camera test, after we've shot and I've seen the monitor with the glasses (wearing a Kimono) and looking by myself in 3D. Oh my god. Especially for a Samurai film. I've never seen that. It's kind of a culture shock. — Hiroyuki Sanada

When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination. — Stanley Kubrick

I try to express in my films things that no other art can approach. In my monster films for example, I use special effects in the same way one would use a special film stock, a special camera, and so on. Monster films permit me to use all of these elements at the same time. They are the most visual kind of film. — Ishiro Honda

If you are a blackman in America and get stopped by the police, make sure you have a vidio camera. Don't rely on some passerby to film the beating. Rodney King was just lucky. — Don King

There's plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film - I don't think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that's going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I'm color-blind. — William Eggleston

I thought all I had to do was to buy a camera and become a film director. So when I left school I worked at a telephone company, which gave me the money to buy the basic equipment including the camera, the projector and the screen. — Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a film about displaced persons, how one feels being uprooted from one's home. — Jonas Mekas

I've always been intimidated by the technicalities of taking photos, especially with a film camera - not just a point and shoot. — Taylor Kitsch

We were using a hand-held camera to film the scene when Morse collapses. The camera wouldn't start. Three times they said action and it still wouldn't work. To this day, they still don't know what was wrong. — John Thaw

I got five kids, and my oldest is a documentary film maker and camera man, and still photographer. — Beau Bridges

Film and television is just a different technique in terms of how to approach the camera but basically the job is the same; but what you learn as a craft in theater, you can then learn to translate that into any mediums. — Joe Morton

There's always been a shortage of roles for three-dimensional women, no matter what age. If you look at the statistics on women in film, be they behind the camera or in front of the camera, and it's pretty nauseous-making. It always has been. — Sally Field

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