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The myth of the „cinematic look" – Why it never existed
A buzzword meets film history reality
In today's world of digital moving images, the term ‘cinematic look’ has become an omnipresent buzzword. Social media tutorials promise to achieve it in five minutes, camera manufacturers advertise it, and content creators talk almost religiously about ways to make their videos ‘more cinematic’. The term serves as a collective term for everything that ‘somehow looks like cinema’: wide, soft, warm, dramatic.
But this modern usage is historically inaccurate. In its more than 120-year history, cinema has never had a uniform visual standard. On the contrary, it has been a constant laboratory of formats, techniques and aesthetics. Any attempt to define the ‘cinematic look’ as something fixed fails because of the enormous plurality of film history.
To understand why this look never existed, one must look to where today's ideas are often derived from: the technical diversity of formats in the 1950s and 60s, the era in which widescreen cinema was born – and yet was anything but homogeneous.
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Everything has a beginning...
...and everything starts with a decision, including this blog. Over the past few years, I have repeatedly had to fight against myths that course and workshop participants had from social media. It is precisely these myths that I will be addressing here. But I also want to include entertaining and instructive topics. It also helps me if I can always refer to a written source.
Learning to see – one image, four interpretations
Recognising a good subject in photography requires experience. This experience does not come from theoretical knowledge alone, but above all from doing – and from consciously accepting mistakes. Anyone who takes photographs must be prepared to take pictures that don't turn out well. In digital photography in particular, this freedom is greater than ever: failed attempts no longer cost film, and unsuccessful shots can be deleted, analysed and left behind.
But before technology and image editing come into play, there is a much more fundamental step: thinking differently. It is not the subject itself that is decisive, but the way we see it. Exercises such as thinking in black and white or deliberately working through an image in different ways help enormously. They train the eye for shapes, contrasts, moods and visual statements.
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The role of photography in the modern world
Photography is much more than capturing a moment. In the modern world, it is a central medium of communication, a tool for remembering and a driver of social change. Technological innovations and digital platforms have multiplied its significance – it shapes how we see ourselves, how we absorb information and how we interpret reality.
Pope Francis' unique Leica M-A
A record sale for a good cause
In November 2025, an extraordinary camera was auctioned at the 47th Leitz Photographica Auction at the Hotel Imperial in Vienna: a specially made Leica M-A, which Pope Francis (1936–2025) had received as a gift from Leica Camera AG in 2024. Leica Camera
