Canadian shooters and their crews have traveled a long road to become among the best in the world.

Cinematography in Canada dates back to the end of the 19th century, and has grown slowly but steadily. By the time the Canadian Society of Cinematographers was founded in 1957, the reputation of Canadian cameramen was well established, although the contingent was small in comparison to the U.S. or Britain. The American Society of Cinematographers launched in 1919, the British Society in 1949.

Led by the National Film Board since 1939, Canada was, and still is, one of the leading producers of acclaimed documentaries. The theatrical feature business was minuscule, and CBC national television was only five years old – younger than that in most provinces outside Ontario and Quebec. Most Canadians listened to radio and went to the cinema to see American and British movies.

When Canadian filmmakers made a feature film that people actually went to see, it was a big deal. Actually, it still is, but less rare. The Mask, a 3D horror film produced and directed by Julian Roffman in 1961, was an early Canadian success. Roffman was one of the founders of the CSC, and his camera team had fellow CSC builders Herb Alpert as director of photography and Maurice ‘Sammy’ Jackson-Samuels as operator on the huge 3D camera.

The CSC connection to the industry had been welded.

In 1963, Reg Morris, an original Class of ’57 member, was DOP on Drylanders, the first full-length feature drama produced by the NFB. The story of pioneer settlers in the Canadian West was filmed in black and white because, Morris said in 1997, ‘the film board was reluctant to spend money on color; we were still shooting black and white when the rest of the world was shooting color.’

A big feather in Canadian cinema’s hat was the 1970 release of Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road, shot mainly hand-held by the late Richard Leiterman, considered to have been one of this country’s finest cinematographers.

‘It was a learning experience for both of us,’ Leiterman once said of himself and Shebib. ‘We shot it with minimal lighting; we shot it [on] 16mm. We would look around and see what there was in the script and see what the weather was like. Sometimes there was just nothing to shoot, and we’d say to the two lead actors, ‘Okay guys, go out and do something.”

DOPs Vic Sarin (Shebib’s Heartaches), Mark Irwin (David Cronenberg’s Scanners) and Doug Koch (Patricia Rozema’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) lensed hits in the 1980s, and Guy Dufaux started his remarkable collaboration with Denys Arcand on The Decline of the American Empire, followed by Jesus of Montreal, both best picture Genie Award winners.

In the 1990s, Paul Sarossy, who has collected a trunk full of CSC and Genie awards for cinematography, joined with Atom Egoyan to film The Adjuster, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia’s Journey, and continued the creative partnership in the 2000s with Ararat and Where the Truth Lies. Also in this decade, Dufaux worked with Arcand on the two sequels in the ‘Decline’ trilogy – Oscar winner The Barbarian Invasions and the forthcoming L’Âge des ténèbres (Days of Darkness.)

The movie credits of CSC member cinematographers is long and impressive, including last year’s Bon Cop, Bad Cop, shot by Bruce Chun, and the 2007 feature Away from Her, photographed by Luc Montpellier. On TV, Rene Ohashi, following a tradition of great cinematography for the small screen (which is getting bigger with HD), has raised the level of excellence in both Canada and the U.S. and collected numerous Gemini and CSC awards. His body of work includes The Arrow, Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Jesse Stone series of U.S. television movies.