The 2025 Emmys Phase II voting window will be here before we know it, which means that it is once again time for the IndieWire Craft team to reach out to the Emmy-nominated cinematographers about their work. As is our custom every year, we asked cinematographers across categories — from hour-long series and half-hour-long series, limited series/anthology series/movie, nonfiction, to reality series — to tell us which cameras and lenses they chose to use and, most importantly, how their tools of choice helped them craft the visual look their show needed.
It is, as ever, fascinating to read about how different directors of photography approached challenges that might outwardly seem similar. Matthew Lewis and Adam Newport-Barra both shot one-take wunderkind series, but in their answers, they singled out different priorities and emphases that they wanted the “Adolescence” and “The Studio” camera teams to focus on. Reality stalwarts “The Amazing Race” and “Survivor” have to adapt to wildly variable and challenging conditions, but their camera teams ask the same questions that the cinematographers behind “The Traitors” do under the stone vaults of their Scottish castle. “Each [tool] is like an ingredient in a stew, and once they’re all together… it tastes and looks like our show. If a camera/lens looks great but doesn’t elevate the look of our show, it doesn’t fit the recipe,” Scott Duncan, cinematographer on “Survivor,” told IndieWire.
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It’s enough of a challenge to set the look for a TV show, but it’s also especially notable this year how cinematographers have approached the opportunities and issues that arise in a Season 2 or a Season 4. On “Hacks,” cinematographer Adam Bricker knew that the right camera for the HBO series would be a RED “from Day 1,” but for Season 4, an upgrade to the V-RAPTOR XL [X] allowed the show to approach the logistics of action sequences with a lot more flexibility. “The Righteous Gemstones” DP Paul Daley also found that the ALEXA 35’s highlight retention improvements over ALEXA LF were “crucial” for the show’s Civil War-set “Prelude” episode, and helped “The Righteous Gemstones” reach a visual ambition the show had never hit before.
In the list below, you can read the visual recipe for the most stunning-looking series of the last year, from “Andor” to “Zero Day” and everything in between.
The nominees’ answers are organized alphabetically by series title.
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