Viewfinders - Text 2
This does not mean that camera operators and cinematographers, who frequently had a fully formed artistic sense and considerable technical expertise, randomly recorded the action unfolding in front of them. Simply, they carefully composed and planned their shots by looking through the lens used for cinematography before filming. This method was relatively well-suited to the making of fiction films, as these required extensive rehearsals anyway. It created a great deal of inconvenience, however, for the makers of actualities, newsreels and documentaries. It is consequently not surprising to find that it was for these filmmakers and cinematographers operating outside of studios that cameras featuring reflex viewfinders were introduced in the late 1930s. In the realm of narrative cinema, reflex viewfinders did not become the norm before the 1960s, when cameras featuring them, such as the Arriflex, were adopted by New Wave filmmakers inspired by documentary filmmaking, and more specifically direct cinema.
Through the Lens Framing
The animated views taken by the Lumière brothers and the multiple camera operators they employed reveal a lot of concern for the pictorial qualities of the images they produced, and more particularly for their composition. These qualities could obviously not be produced through guesswork. The Cinématographe designed in 1895 by the Lumière brothers did not feature any viewfinder; nevertheless it enabled operators to prepare their shot by resorting to a technique with which still photographers of the era were quite accustomed.