 Returning to California after his service was complete, he worked on commercials, television shows, and low-budget films; he won a technical Emmy for his special-effects work on the popular public television astronomy series "".He began working on major feature films for Francis Ford Coppola in 1976, shooting the second unit of "Apocalypse Now" and then "The Black Stallion".His first credit as the cinematographer of a major motion picture was for "The Escape Artist" (1982).