HCB and his lenses
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Richard G
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Vincent.G
Well-known
Vics
Veteran
I just mean that his preference for the 50mm lens is important because it informed his compositional ideas, but the choice of one 50 over another is of less importance. He preferred fast lenses because the films were so slow in the '30s and '40s. That's all I meant.
Vics
Veteran
Cartier-Bresson is a popular target of mockery these days, and some folks like to mock even those who admire his work and who are curious about his methods. Anytime a thread goes up with HCB in the title, this happens.
leicapixie
Well-known
HCB was about simplicity of means not method. Few photographers then and now,( read never), would go around the World with so little equipment. Yet HCB's photographs are so perfect.Indeed he proofed and then chose. We all do that. Do some Google search. One can even find out how many rolls were shot in India, including Gandhi's murder.
jett
Well-known
no kidding.
I never read up on HCB but I just knew what he was known for: Leica + 50mm Summicron. It gets discussesd from time to time so it is one of those things that most leica enthusiasts just know. I then saw a thread that he used a Nocti, so that got me thinking, maybe he shot with a bunch of lenses: summitars, summars, summilux's, and every version of the summicron. However, a lot of people seemed to think that I was trying to mimic him in some way or form.
thompsonks
Well-known
After seeing HCB's Modern Century show a couple of times I looked though the book version, thinking about his lenses and compositions. I've tried 50mm Sonnars (old and new) and Summicrons to see just what they see. I've come to prefer pre-asphericals and don't make much use of newer lenses.
IMO urban space has changed so much since HCB's time that a 50 won't work as well on the streets as it did in days of more open boulevards. Ours is a more crowded world with so many cars filling the streets. Most of the 'decisive moments' that I enjoy seem to be made from closer distances with wider-angle lenses, just to isolate a subject or to show a complex segment of the 'dance of life.' The complexity of Winogrand and Friedlander – and a wider angle of view – seems to have replaced the more isolated subjects and the beautifully formal geometry of so many of HCB's pictures.
I've also noticed that photographers who use rangefinders lately tend to use wider apertures, to achieve some of the effects imposed on HCB's generation by slower films -- this in contrast to the easily-achieved deep DOF of so much digital photography.
In commenting on HCB's lenses and compositions, I don't mean to say that Summicrons mattered more than the fluid shooting style that made the Leica an extension of his eye and body. And just as simportant as his equipment was his willingness to walk 20 or even 30 km a day in search of images.
Kirk
IMO urban space has changed so much since HCB's time that a 50 won't work as well on the streets as it did in days of more open boulevards. Ours is a more crowded world with so many cars filling the streets. Most of the 'decisive moments' that I enjoy seem to be made from closer distances with wider-angle lenses, just to isolate a subject or to show a complex segment of the 'dance of life.' The complexity of Winogrand and Friedlander – and a wider angle of view – seems to have replaced the more isolated subjects and the beautifully formal geometry of so many of HCB's pictures.
I've also noticed that photographers who use rangefinders lately tend to use wider apertures, to achieve some of the effects imposed on HCB's generation by slower films -- this in contrast to the easily-achieved deep DOF of so much digital photography.
In commenting on HCB's lenses and compositions, I don't mean to say that Summicrons mattered more than the fluid shooting style that made the Leica an extension of his eye and body. And just as simportant as his equipment was his willingness to walk 20 or even 30 km a day in search of images.
Kirk
Roger Hicks
Veteran
indianavince
Member
Thanks for posting the above link to the Indian trip... most wonderful thing I have read about photography in a very long time.
Sandwick
Sandwick
PKR - Thank you for posting the ishupatel.com link, I've never seen it before. I find it fascinating to see a little of how Cartier-Bresson actually worked, not to mention his obvious humanity.....but I still reserve the right to be interested in his choice of lens(es)!
Clint Troy
Well-known
What isn't a complete waste of money in the world we live in?
sparrow6224
Well-known
Henri Cartier Bresson would never have worn a Ralph Lauren shirt. I'm from a working class background and even I wouldn't wear a Ralph Lauren shirt. In those days one had one's shirts made to order. Not ready-to-wear from a 5'3" crude pretender from the Bronx. If you immerse yourself in photography you learn that the equipment matters only insofar as it affects one's comfort and ease in using it. No one on the planet, I assert, can look at a 1938 photograph and determine it was shot with an Elmar 50/3.5 or the quite superior Zeiss 50/2 or 50/1.5 sonnars. Very few of HCB's surviving book-published shots are shot at wide apertures and at f/4 to f/8 the quality differences among decent 50mm lenses in b/w are too fine to matter much. What made him a great photographer was technique, aesthetic, moral and historical sense (ie intelligence), eye, and endurance. Or, to quote the old adage, the secret to great photography is "f/8 and be there." HCB was there to an extraordinary degree.
Clint Troy
Well-known
You say he'd never wear a RL, I say he'd always wear one if he could.
Who is right? Who is wrong?
Who is right? Who is wrong?
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
Let's not forget that HCB also wore a hat and glasses at times. And a good pair of shoes. Surely he took a photo here and there without his shoes on. Or his hat. Or his glasses.
jsrockit
Moderator
Well, maybe great photo journalism.
mfogiel
Veteran
This story says a few interesting things:
- first, he took MANY photographs - 20 rolls a day make 720 frames, therefore there was little luck involved, it was mainly hard work
- second, shooting at f8.0 and 1/60 or 1/125, he had to have the time to set up the photo perfectly in his mind, and have the camera focused at the right distance, before freezing for a moment to frame and shoot, in other words, he was shooting on auto everything, the only critical element was the perfect framing, this can only come after extensive practice
- third, I believe he used f8.0 so often also because he was interested to "show the truth" about human condition, he wanted to describe men in their environment, therefore isolating the subject did not seem something of particular interest, the photos with shallow depth of field from him, that I have seen, are mainly taken on the streets of Paris, which perhaps was so common to him, that he felt a minor urge to document it
A myth of a rich dandy playing with a Leica and taking good pictures through pure luck is completely misplaced. It is evident, that he was passionate, hard working, and had evolved a personal technical set up appropriate for the results he was after.
In other words, he was a SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL. Not everybody has to love his style, but none the less HCB produced an amount of strong and memorable images, that would suffice as "iconic visit cards" of several scores of photographers.
- first, he took MANY photographs - 20 rolls a day make 720 frames, therefore there was little luck involved, it was mainly hard work
- second, shooting at f8.0 and 1/60 or 1/125, he had to have the time to set up the photo perfectly in his mind, and have the camera focused at the right distance, before freezing for a moment to frame and shoot, in other words, he was shooting on auto everything, the only critical element was the perfect framing, this can only come after extensive practice
- third, I believe he used f8.0 so often also because he was interested to "show the truth" about human condition, he wanted to describe men in their environment, therefore isolating the subject did not seem something of particular interest, the photos with shallow depth of field from him, that I have seen, are mainly taken on the streets of Paris, which perhaps was so common to him, that he felt a minor urge to document it
A myth of a rich dandy playing with a Leica and taking good pictures through pure luck is completely misplaced. It is evident, that he was passionate, hard working, and had evolved a personal technical set up appropriate for the results he was after.
In other words, he was a SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL. Not everybody has to love his style, but none the less HCB produced an amount of strong and memorable images, that would suffice as "iconic visit cards" of several scores of photographers.
jsrockit
Moderator
I've never seen this myth at all. It always seems to me that he is one of the more popular photographers who people, generally, seem to respect. Start a thread on William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Gursky, Stephen Shore, or Martin Parr (to name a few) if you want to see polarizing photographers.
kdemas
Enjoy Life.
Vics
Veteran
Your post is very well thought out and reasoned, and I'd only mildly disagree. I think HCB's 50mm preference came more from his training in drawing and painting than a difference in time. He worked a lot in environments that offered then, as now, a visual appeal that we don't have as much of in the US. Paris is just one example of a very tightly planned cityscape that lends itself to the 50mm FOV. It still looks that way today, as it did in 1890 when Hausmann's plan was brought to fruition. My point is that I think that if he were working today, his painter's eye would still lead him to the 50mm lens.
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