Retro-Grouch
Veteran
Take a look at Mapplethorpe's work. No such thing as an ex-Catholic, just a Catholic in recovery. I speak from experience here!
Why HCB uses a 50mm lens
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raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
I was very emotionally moved when I visited the older Catholic Churches and Cathedrals - both in Italy and in France. I was amazed at the beauty, design, and solemnity of the spaces; and moreover, how they were constructed.
On another note, guess who was invited to the Sistine Chapel recently:
www.breitbart.com
On another note, guess who was invited to the Sistine Chapel recently:
Pope Francis Welcomes ‘Piss Christ’ Artist in Vatican
Pope Francis stunned the faithful when he welcomed the creator of “Piss Christ” showing a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine.
www.breitbart.com
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Retro-Grouch
Veteran
Well! Take that, Jesse Helms!I was very emotionally moved when I visited the older Catholic Churches and Cathedrals - both in Italy and in France. I was amazed at the beauty, design, and solemnity of the spaces; and moreover, how they were constructed.
On another note, guess who was invited to the Sistine Chapel recently:
Pope Francis Welcomes ‘Piss Christ’ Artist in Vatican
Pope Francis stunned the faithful when he welcomed the creator of “Piss Christ” showing a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
A trip to Chartres is always moving for me. The cathedral was built in about 25 years, a record. The architect is unknown. The rich contributed money. The poor contributed labor and pulled carts loaded with the stones used to build the cathedral They stopped hourly for prayer and meditation. It is built on a hill in a valley. Before the cathedral there was a church and before that was a Roman temple and before that a Druid temple and before that other places of worship. This site has been special to many for centuries. Think about that.
Driving south from Paris on N20 in August you pass through fields of ripe wheat. You crest a ridge and see the cathedral, seemingly levitating out of a wheat field. Imagine being a pilgrim marching toward that vision for two or three days. Enter the cathedral and you are moved by the higher silences. It is also the local parish church. I have seen baptisms and weddings there. It moves me mightily and I am not Catholic. I am not even baptized. It moves most.
Too many photos to post here, too few to capture the majesty. If you are near, go.
flic.kr
Driving south from Paris on N20 in August you pass through fields of ripe wheat. You crest a ridge and see the cathedral, seemingly levitating out of a wheat field. Imagine being a pilgrim marching toward that vision for two or three days. Enter the cathedral and you are moved by the higher silences. It is also the local parish church. I have seen baptisms and weddings there. It moves me mightily and I am not Catholic. I am not even baptized. It moves most.
Too many photos to post here, too few to capture the majesty. If you are near, go.
Chartres
If you drive south on N20 from Paris to Chartres in the summer the wheat fields will be golden. The seem to flow endlessly south, waving undulant in the sunshine. At a point you will crest a ridge and see the cathedral, seemingly levitating in the fields of wheat. It is a moving sight. It is...
flic.kr
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Erik van Straten
Veteran
Cartier-Bresson always had the entire negative printed, he forbade "nibbling on the edges of the image". He did not print the photos himself.
He used a "Vidom" viewfinder when shooting. A VIDOM gives a mirror-wrong image. Many art painters look at their work in a mirror to be able to judge the effect of the composition better. If you look at an image the wrong way round (as in a mirror), it is as if you are looking at the work with the eyes of someone else - and then you can better notice its weaknesses. That is because your brain is then not yet used to the image. Your brain strongly influences the images that you perceive. That's why drawing - and painting - is so difficult.
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raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
I’m not sure I’m an ex-Catholic but definitely non-practicing. I still have faith though.
I was fortunate to be educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph in the mid-60’s-early-70’s and appreciated the excellent education I received.
My finance’ is a devout Buddhist and we visited many temples and interacted with many monks in Cambodia. It was an enjoyable experience; except for sitting and kneeling on the floor. I am just not that flexible and it is very uncomfortable. 😣
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raid
Dad Photographer
I have always favored using a 50mm lens in my photography over the years. It seems to work best for me.
FrozenInTime
Well-known
I imagine HCB using the 35mm Summilux for his holiday, family and party snaps ... keeping the 50mm for project work ;-)
Jonathan R
Well-known
I've always been intrigued by this idea. I can vouch for the fact that anyone will make a much better copy of a drawing if you turn the original upside down. So there is something going on between brain and eye. However, if I flip an image left-to-right, the composition often - but not always - looks wrong to me. I'm sure someone is going to counter that - I'm just saying that is how things are for me. Here's an HCB example, original (which I adore) on the left:
Retro-Grouch
Veteran
We in the West read left-to-right. We bring that habit to a photograph when we encounter it, so identical subject matter carries a different "weight" in the image, depending on which side of the image it's on, and whether we encounter it first or last in our visual scan of the image.
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boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
Cartier-Bresson was a painter. He would incorporate painterly tricks in his camera craft. As I understand him the camera was just an easy sketch pad.
Bill Clark
Veteran
This is what I have been informed about a 50mm lens:
“For one part, 50-mm lenses reproduce the proportions of faces, depth, and perspective at roughly the same size as we see with our naked eyes. For another, a 50-mm field of view roughly matches the human angle of vision.”
“For one part, 50-mm lenses reproduce the proportions of faces, depth, and perspective at roughly the same size as we see with our naked eyes. For another, a 50-mm field of view roughly matches the human angle of vision.”
Jonathan R
Well-known
Perspective is actually a function of viewpoint, rather than of the camera. Portraitists will tell you that a lens with a focal length of ~90-100mm gives the most recognisable proportions to human faces, but it seems to me that must depend on how close the camera is. HCB's portraits, for instance, tended to be full-length or half-length. I can't think of one of his that is head only.
The angle of human vision can of course be measured in physical terms, but in practical experience it is a complex thing, appearing to change with how intently we are looking at something. Maybe that's why some people find 35mm gives a field of view that seems natural to them, others 50mm.
Bill Clark
Veteran
For my business, medium format, for people, full length I used an 80mm lens. I also used a 150:when I could as it gave me the most flattering photographs of people, especially faces.
raydm6
Yay! Cameras! 🙈🙉🙊┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ [◉"]
50mm? This is why.
Rikard
Established
Interesting thread as I just recently acquired my first 50 ever. I started photographing 15 years ago. Then it was mostly mountain sports; skiing and mountain biking. I only used 14-24 and 70-200 zoom lenses for several years. For a long time I really liked the effect those lenses gave the image. But then my visual taste started to change and at the same time I started to enjoy shooting film much more than digital. I sold my digital kit and got myself a Leica m6 with a summicron 40mm lens. And this is the lens I have been using 90% of the time since then. But lately I have found several times that I want to compose tighter. Again, I could feel how my visual preference was changing. So I bought a 50, a Zeiss Sonnar. I have only shot a few rolls with it and I do struggle sometimes, but I do think this lens will become my main one for many years.
Retro-Grouch
Veteran
I think that for many of us, maturing as photographers, understanding our medium, and having a better sense of what we want to say leads with a certain inevitability to settling with the 50mm (or equivalent in whatever format). This has been the case for me; I've realized that the most significant characteristic of photography is its ability to describe, fully and accurately, to say hey, look at this! I want my attempts to describe to be as uninflected as possible, without the distortions of more extreme lenses. I don't use anything wider than 35mm or longer than 75mm, and these lengths are only to allow me to crop; otherwise, the 50mm stays on. The 35 and the 75 are still, essentially, "invisible" and "uninflected".
To open another can of worms, I now shoot in color for the same reasons. It describes more fully, without the abstraction of B&W. I can show more and tell more.
Personal taste, of course. YMMV, as it should!
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
The focal length most mimicking our field of vision, yes. This will go on for a while. I understood that around 40mm was closest. I have a 40mm CV which I like, very crisp and good color. And the HB XCD 55V translates to ~43mm on a 35mm camera and that is supposed to be the "correct" human field of view. 50's are nice and seem to be the standard for 35mm cameras. For whatever reason they seem to work well. Pixel peeping and perspective arguments will not change a lousy image into a good one or the other way around any more than a different ISO or film stock would. A good capture speaks for itself regardless of lens length. All of us could do well with a decent 35mm camera and a 50mm lens. These are not the limiting factors. This is not to say that if you specialize in a certain form of photography that a certain length would not be the most flattering. But IMO a good fifty will work just about all the time.
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
I do not have the chops to shoot good B&W. I just cannot do it well at all. I am a bit luckier with color, but still playing in the triple-A league.
Bill Blackwell
Leica M Shooter
I certainly am not an expert on the man, but HCB was an interesting guy who just had an eye for "the moment" - in fact he was simply brilliant. But I've never seen anything about HCB where much insight was gained about his art technique. That includes why he seemed to prefer using a 50mm lens. His answers, at least to me, were always gibberish. I recall in an interview with Charlie Rose, in response to a question something like - "where do you get your inspiration" - HCB responded with "I just press the button." Even the OP's initial remarks quoting him don't dissuade my thinking on this point.
There has been allot of talk about "cropping" in this thread, but I understand he didn't even do his own printing.
There has been allot of talk about "cropping" in this thread, but I understand he didn't even do his own printing.
