Dale Elena McCready BSC NZCS is a New Zealand-born cinematographer based in the United Kingdom, working primarily in television drama and feature film production. She began her career in New Zealand during the 1990s, working in the camera department and progressing to camera operator and Steadicam operator.
McCready’s early experience included work on television productions such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. She also worked as a camera operator on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), filmed partly in New Zealand. Her first feature film as director of photography was Topless Women Talk About Their Lives (1997), a New Zealand independent production.
After moving to the United Kingdom in the early 2000s, McCready established herself in television drama. Her credits include Merlin (2008–2012), on which she worked as director of photography across multiple episodes and seasons. She subsequently worked on series including Silk (2011), Atlantis (2013), In the Flesh (2013–2014), Cucumber (2015) and Stan Lee’s Lucky Man (2016).
McCready continued to work across British and international television productions, serving as director of photography on Tin Star (2017–2020), The Split (2018), Baghdad Central (2020) and Belgravia (2020). Her work on Tin Star received a Gold Award from the New Zealand Cinematographers Society in 2018.
Her later credits include The Witcher (2023), The Burning Girls (2023), Belgravia: The Next Chapter (2023), The Day of the Jackal (2024) and The War Between the Land and the Sea (2025). She also worked on the supernatural drama The Rising (2022) and the crime series Grace.