Errol Morris Quotes

The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.

Working in 3D I didn't experience much of a difference, except that the cameras are very big so they can't be moved around with as much ease. It was more like, when you've seen photos of cameras from the 1930s being moved around with these huge cranes. So there was something quite sort of old-fashioned about it almost.

Shigure: "What's in the camera? Huh? Huh? What is it?" Hatori: "Quiet, you hack.

Anything involving the camera, you're passionate about. Because there's no movies without it.

I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.

My main camera is a Nikon D3. I use a French camera from the 1800s for wet plate photography, I use a Hasselblad sometimes. But to me the camera really doesn't matter that much. I don't have a preference for film or digital.

When I'm interviewing somebody I don't work from prepared questions.

When you're interviewing someone, even your mother - you have to sort of deal with you have to get some objective space from yourself and the person but you also have to find what's the best way to get the information from that person.

I don't really have a favorite camera. I use a Leica and Canon a lot. It depends, especially professionally, on the requirements. But my carry-around camera is a Leica.

In Bosnia, there are no 35mm cameras. There are no film labs.

I never do formal interviews. I don't use a tape recorder. I take notes but occasionally.

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.

I built my own studio. I don't have the professional language to describe it because I'm not a videographer - but I'm a technician. So I get the camera, I get all the things that translate the camera to the computer, I set up a live session, I do the security on it, I set up a background so I can key it out, like newscasters do, and replace it with whatever I want - and I can be anywhere I need to be.

I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

A digital camera does have many advantages and I was a believer that digital video would be a big influence on film-making.

Cameras intrigued me.

I am always surprised when I see several cameras, a gaggle on lenses, filters, meters, et cetera, rattling around in a soft bag with a complement of refuse and dust. Sometimes the professional is the worst offender!

Using iPads as cameras, for example, is like taking pictures with a cafeteria tray.

The camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time.

The camera's dumb, it don't [sic] care who's pushing the button. It doesn't know.

There are photographic fanatics, just as there are religious fanatics. They buy a so-called candid camera there is no such thing: it’s the photographer who has to be candid, not the camera.

I don't think of it as difficult. It would be difficult if I were carrying something heavy, but I carry Leicas. You can't talk about it that way. I'm not operating a shovel and getting tired.

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

At the beginning, people laughed at me because I was using snappies. Sometimes, a celebrity would look at my camera and go, Oh, I've got one of those. I'd feel like handing it to them and saying, Well, you take the pictures then. But I like using snapshot cameras because they're idiot-proof. I have bad eyesight, and I'm no good at focusing big cameras.

Forget the camera, forget the lens, forget all of that. With any four-dollar camera, you can capture the best picture.