Smithard studied film at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design from 1988 to 1991. After graduating, he spent approximately seven years working as a lighting technician and chief lighting technician, primarily on commercials and music videos, before moving into cinematography in the late 1990s.
Ben initially established himself as a director of photography in commercial and music-video production before progressing to television drama and feature films. His early television credits include Spooks, The Street, Vincent and The Royle Family. He photographed the BBC period drama Cranford (2007) and its follow-up, Return to Cranford (2009), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for the latter.
His feature-film credits include The Damned United (2009), directed by Tom Hooper; My Week with Marilyn (2011), directed by Simon Curtis; Belle (2013), directed by Amma Asante; Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013), directed by Declan Lowney; The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), directed by John Madden; Viceroy’s House (2017) and Blinded by the Light (2019), both directed by Gurinder Chadha; and Downton Abbey (2019), directed by Michael Engler.
Smithard’s later work includes Florian Zeller’s The Father (2020) and The Son (2022), Richard Eyre’s Allelujah (2022), Freud’s Last Session (2023), and Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (2025). His cinematography on The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, formed part of a film that received multiple major awards and nominations.