Cartier Bresson and wide angle lenses

[Roger Hicks]

I have to ask, other than that this is a gear-centric forum, can anyone explain to me why it's important to know what equipment any of HCB's images were made with, please?

Well, it's often a bad idea to try to achieve a particular effect with totally the wrong kit. A friend of mine had been trying to shoot Hollywood style portraits for years with 4x5 inch and all but wept when he saw how quickly and easily I could do it with 8x10. By the same token I'd have thought that focal length was not irrelevant -- ESPECIALLY given that there are those who try to pretend that he always used 50mm, when some of his shots would have been difficult or impossible with a 50mm.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Rodchenko]

Are you saying that, sometimes, size is everything?

 

[Rodchenko]

I've just re-read the passages in the Berger book I'm reading related to his friend, HCB. Though he mentions the great man handling a camera in a report of one discussion, he makes no mention of the lens. Thoughtless, if you ask me.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Are you saying that, sometimes, size is everything?

Sometimes. The "little ease" was a well known torture: a room too small to stand up in, or to lie at full length. There was reputed to be one at the Tower of London and I think I have read of them being used in PoW camps in WW2.

Cheers,

R.

 

[NY_Dan]

I was thinking of HCB when I shot this photo in Brooklyn, NY on 3/14/2014:

 

[cz23]

Dan, I hope that's from a square format camera and you didn't break THE MAN's rule and crop.

 

[NY_Dan]

Dan, I hope that's from a square format camera and you didn't break THE MAN's rule and crop.

Yes, square. I don't want to crop and get hit with a lightning bolt!

If I had shot 35mm, then the timing for traffic cop would have to have been different. Would be so much different with a horizontal!

 

[Gary Sandhu]

I'm sure if you knew a few distances and measurements one could figure out what lens he used -- maybe on an episode of the current forensic law/science show (there's usually one around?)

 

[Anthony Harvey]

Discussing the lenses that Henri used is just subject-matter for interesting conversation and thoughts. It's no more or less important than that. I imagine that's the reason most of us engage in this forum anyway - interesting and enjoyable conversation, and great images.

I think the point about Henri's use of the 50mm lens is that it's the only lens that he seems to have used for the vast majority of his portraits - although I'm sure there will be the odd exception, such as the 1946 photo of Sartre on a Paris bridge, where to my mind the lens is at least 90mm.

 

[noisycheese]

My understanding of HCB's lens choices is that in the beginning, he used a 50mm because that was what was available. In later years, he began to shoot with the 35mm lens that Leica had created and released.

He created many photographic masterpieces, regardless of which lens he was using.

 

[hepcat]

Well, it's often a bad idea to try to achieve a particular effect with totally the wrong kit. A friend of mine had been trying to shoot Hollywood style portraits for years with 4x5 inch and all but wept when he saw how quickly and easily I could do it with 8x10. By the same token I'd have thought that focal length was not irrelevant -- ESPECIALLY given that there are those who try to pretend that he always used 50mm, when some of his shots would have been difficult or impossible with a 50mm.

Cheers,

R.

While that's true, you're addressing very different approaches. With Hollywood style portraiture, you (should) know what your result will be before you start. With 'street' work you capture what's there with the equipment you have, and in the final analysis it's about enjoying the image itself much less than whether it was made with a 35 mm or 50mm lens.

Each format, each lens combo has circumstances under which they achieve a better result for a specific intended purpose. When you shoot candids on the street though, you make a best guess about your equipment before you go out... and then you shoot with it and do the best you can. Maybe you even choose your shots for the gear you have...

 

[Ansel]

Thanks. Yes, I just raised it as an interesting topic for discussion.

Here's another one of CBs with a wider lens...

http://pleasurephoto.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/romania-1975-by-henri-cartier-bresson.jpg

And here you can see him with a wide angle finder on his m3. Anyone know what focal length the finder is for?

http://dysonology.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/jane-bown-henri-cartier-bresson-19571.jpg

This one of matisse also looks wider, probably 35mm:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-lAUHP6JT.../s1600/Henri-Cartier-Bresson-Intimate-New.jpg

 

[telenous]

...

And here you can see him with a wide angle finder on his m3. Anyone know what focal length the finder is for?

http://dysonology.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/jane-bown-henri-cartier-bresson-19571.jpg

...

That looks like a VIDOM 'universal' finder. It progressively crops the viewfinder image from 35mm down to 135mm. He used it from early on (see first photo here: http://www.r3maf.com/HCB.html ) as a compositional aid: It would reverse the view and there was also a way to turn the viewing image upside-down. Judging from the big front element, the lens looks like an early Summilux 50/1.4 -- or maybe just his regular Summicron 50/2? Not sure.

.

 

[swoop]

I think the 50mm only thing is just a legend.

 

[Roger Hicks]

While that's true, you're addressing very different approaches. With Hollywood style portraiture, you (should) know what your result will be before you start. With 'street' work you capture what's there with the equipment you have, and in the final analysis it's about enjoying the image itself much less than whether it was made with a 35 mm or 50mm lens.

Each format, each lens combo has circumstances under which they achieve a better result for a specific intended purpose. When you shoot candids on the street though, you make a best guess about your equipment before you go out... and then you shoot with it and do the best you can. Maybe you even choose your shots for the gear you have...

Not unfair. But equally, not a total rebuttal of my point. With "street" photography you have (some) pre-existing ideas too. And if you're trying to copy HCB's style...

Cheers,

R.

 

[Rodchenko]

Sorry that these are secondary references, but I thought they might be interesting. The first is from a letter to, IIRC, BJP by Granville Davies, which he ascribes to the book Photographs by Cartier Bresson, published by Jonathan Cape in 1964

In an introduction Beaumont Newhall* states that HC-B uses a Leica M3 covered in black tape. He goes on to say, and here I quote directly from the text, 'For most pictures he uses an f/2 (occasionally f/1.4) 50mm lens. Over his shoulder in a small, well-worn bag, he also carries a 35mm f/2 wide angle lens and a 90mm f/2.8 - which he uses whenever he feels the composition of the frame requires them - plus five rolls of film, four of medium speed, and one of extremely high speed.'

Newhall goes on to explain that HC-B uses mainly the 50mm lens because he finds composing with it suits him better; he dislikes wide angle and telephoto perspectives. Newhall also offers the insight: 'He (HC-B) also carries at times in his hip pocket the body of a second Leica M3 camera into which he can fit any of the three lenses...If colour is to be shot, the extra body is loaded with colour film.'

The same 1964 book also has as a frontispiece HC-B's 1948 picture of women praying in Kashmir, a different frame, however, from the one used on the cover of Henri Cartier Bresson in India by Thames and Hudson. Did the great man have second thoughts about this particular decisive moment, one wonders? But, of course, it matters not, the pictures are there; the whys and wherefores are simply footnotes

The second is, I think, from AP, but at a different time. It's from Ian Hoskin:

...In Beaumont Newhall's essay on HCB written in 1946 and published in Photography: Essays and Images - edited by Newhall and published in 1980, Newhall states that Bresson has: 'A Contax, a Leica and a battery of lenses. His favourite at the moment is a hybrid: A Contax f/1.5 lens mounted on a Leica body.'...

* curator at MOMA

 

[Ansel]

That looks like a VIDOM 'universal' finder. It progressively crops the viewfinder image from 35mm down to 135mm. He used it from early on (see first photo here: http://www.r3maf.com/HCB.html ) as a compositional aid: It would reverse the view and there was also a way to turn the viewing image upside-down. Judging from the big front element, the lens looks like an early Summilux 50/1.4 -- or maybe just his regular Summicron 50/2? Not sure.

.

Thanks. Great article.

 

[leicapixie]

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141095

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141095

A 50mm can be a variable length!
Depending on position, use of aperture,
it can appear to be a longer focus or a wide angle.
It's the perspective.
Going so many years later to same spot may still not prove.
The steps may have been change.
Cartier-Bresson was tall.
He may have held camera above his head allowing more details and scene.
The cyclist may have been circling the bloc!
Many chances or a few or one?
Ernst Haas in interview said in later life, HCB often used the 35mm.
I think it's more important to find one's own point of view..
Looking at that huge book on Robert Frank's "The Americans",
such a mind numbing dis-section of his small book of pictures!
I always avoided those "critical analysis" of literature,poetry and art.
It's like calling in forensic to work out how good a sexual moment was.. Oh! My Mama was Parisian.

 

[David Hughes]

That looks like a VIDOM 'universal' finder. It progressively crops the viewfinder image from 35mm down to 135mm. He used it from early on (see first photo here: http://www.r3maf.com/HCB.html ) as a compositional aid: It would reverse the view and there was also a way to turn the viewing image upside-down. Judging from the big front element, the lens looks like an early Summilux 50/1.4 -- or maybe just his regular Summicron 50/2? Not sure.

.

Hi,

It looks like a 3,5cm (or 35mm) Elmar on the camera to me. I've one in the display cabinet and it stays there most of the time. I don't know what the others who have used one think but I wasn't impressed after the standard 5cm Elmar. Perhaps HCB thought the same, it would explain a lot.

Regards, David

 

[CameraQuest]

It is often said that Cartier Bresson used a 50mm lens exclusively or predominantly, and yet when I browse through his work, or indeed images of the great man himself with his cameras, it is clear he was also an avid wide angle lens user, probably 35mm but also 28mm.

What do you think?

I think if you want to discuss a photographer,
it would help if you posted in the correct forum.

Stephen