How did HCB determine exposure?

[dave lackey]

Sunny 16? Some kind of meter?

 

[kbg32]

I believe he relied on experience through the years. I don't recall ever reading he used a light meter. I can recall when I was younger, reading an article by a well known photographer, that there were basically just 3 different exposures. Everything else are variants of them. Made quite a lot of sense to me back then. Once you master your film/camera/exposure, through experience/trial and error, it all becomes quite easy.

 

[mervynyan]

f5.6 1/125 as guideline, also there was a darkroom push-pull. so not every picture is perfectly exposed.

 

[SimonSawSunlight]

you can perfectly survive without a meter, I rarely use one at all. 🙂

 

[Luis]

This is what Bob Schwalberg said about Cartier-Bresson's metering methods in the May 1967 issue of Popular Photography:

"One afternoon we sat together in my Wetzlar apartment discussing films and developers. Cartier-Bresson repetedly referred to the fact that he exposed Ilford HP3 film at 400 ASA. I cut in to ask, since he almost never uses an exposure meter, how could he claim to be exposing at 400 or any other ASA? He insisted, however, that he exposed consistently at 400 ASA.
At this point I picked up a Norwood exposure meter, twisted the bubble toward Cartier-Bresson with the scale facing me, and asked for the exposure at 400 ASA. Without hesitation, he told me exactly what the Norwood did. Slightly taken aback, but not yet defeated, I aimed a flexible desk lamp so as to crosslight my face, and again demanded the 400 ASA exposure. Cartier-Bresson took perhaps 10 seconds before replying: 'Well, it depends on whether you mean the right or left side of your face. On the right it's about 1/15 at f/2; the left is probably close to f/2.8 at 1/30.' Both answers were bang-on, and thereafter I accepted his 400 ASA as being at least as reliable as my meter's."

 

[gekopaca]

That's a master without meter

 

[Keith]

I would imagine that when you've taken as many exposures as HCB or Winogrand etc it would be instinctive. I can go meterless fairly successfully but I do have to think about it and will start from a baseline of f16 and work my way backwards to where I think the light actually is based on Fred Parker's excellent charts.

This thread is worth checking ... It's been a round quite a while but I still get regular PM's from people wanting the files so they can print a copy for themselves.

I never go anywhere with a camera without one of these little charts.

 

[gekopaca]

When my father teached me photography he adviced me to note in a note book the setups I've done for each picture. He said me that it will help me to choose best setups in the future.
I think that there's some good "old school" rules to "survive without a meter":
- always same camera, lens, film and chemistry (HCB style)
- experience (notebook, chart, lot of pictures, time…)
- good knowledge of darkroom (I'm not sur it's always easy to print HCB negatives!)

 

[shyoon]

I was under the impression that HCB was notoriously bad with his exposures - to the point where his printers had to burn and dodge a great amount to get a usable image.

 

[Freakscene]

The HC-B negs that I have seen are exposed quite variably. Voja Mitrovic, one of the greatest living B&W printers, found some of HC-Bs negatives difficult to print. If they were difficult for Voja, normal printers can forget about it, or accept that a print equivalent to Voja's might require a couple of weeks and hundreds of sheets of paper.

Marty

 

[robklurfield]

The film in HCB's heyday wasn't all that forgiving in terms of latitude which can't have made things any easier for the poor souls charged with printing his images.

 

[ItsReallyDarren]

I once attended a lecture with Marc Riboud speaking. During the Q&A at the end someone asked how he determined exposure.

His reply, "I look".

What else can you say, he was right.

 

[tyrone.s]

I once attended a lecture with Marc Riboud speaking. During the Q&A at the end someone asked how he determined exposure.

His reply, "I look".

What else can you say, he was right.

Fantastic! Guy de Maupassant said much the same thing when asked how he wrote.

His reply, "Get black on white."

 

[Neare]

I'm not blowing my horn but I don't use a meter and I have never looked into what sunny 16 is (this applies to using my main camera, the Norita, my newish M6 has a meter in it of course). Most of the exposures I have taken have been primarily through guessing and 90%+ of the shots I take are exposed to exactly how I imagined.

Everyone who doubts HCB's ability simply needs to leave the meter at home for a month. You just pick the ability up, it's like playing the guitar, it comes with practice. Selecting exposures is awfully easy, sometimes you need to take a few seconds to think about it. As HCB said, you generally learn one ASA and if you're shooting at another, you just take the + or - stops into account when making the calculation.

I know everyone here has at some point seen every light intensity, just memorize the exposure to each. Memorize it with shutter speed and a fixed aperture, then if you want to open the lens or lower the shutter speed you simply move the two dials together in unison - like clutch and acceleration no?

 

[Edward C. Zimmermann]

There are a number of techniques to determine exposure relatively accurately without a meter. Agfa rolled them up many decades ago into a simple little calculator for Middle European light. It featured time of year, time of day, motives etc.

to good results. I've compared on several occasions the results of the Agfa "calculator" with my Specra to great astonishment..

For "normal" street photography in my youth I did not meter since I did not have a meter. Neither my Leica--- purchased by my father on the black market when he was a DP--- nor Retina--- purchased by parents in the 1950s as easier to use--- had built-in meters. The Leica's shutter was not even terribly accurate but that did not stop me in my late teens from traveling across Europe shooting slides. The results were quite acceptable.

A few years ago traveling in Greece the battery in our Rollei 35SE failed. Went to a local shop to hear that "there are no PX27 batteries available anymore in all of Greece". Without a battery I stopped a tourist and asked to use their camera to make a few readings of the light. Using that as a base I shot the rest of the trip without a meter. And the results? The photos I took without a meter where better exposed than the ones where I used the meter. The difference was the human brain. The 35SE lets one all too easily shoot under orders of the meter--- its got LEDs in the viewfinder--- rather than brain and intuition. That's were external meters have their value.

 

[Sparrow]

I was under the impression that HCB was notoriously bad with his exposures - to the point where his printers had to burn and dodge a great amount to get a usable image.

The negs I've seen were also very variable ... those with the Scrapbook Exhibition

 

[andersju]

I was under the impression that HCB was notoriously bad with his exposures - to the point where his printers had to burn and dodge a great amount to get a usable image.

In a thread on photo.net, François P. Weill wrote:

"Unfortunately this approach is notorious to have lead the Master into completely botch all the rolls he took in May 1968, in Paris during one of the largest demonstration he covered, by extreme overexposure...

Due to the (justified) fame of "Monsieur" Cartier-Bresson the lab promptly realized inter-negatives to allow printing of the otherwise inexploitable shots... Any less famous Free-Lance photographer bringing back such films to the Press Agency would have been kicked in the a..s and fired on the spot ! ... "

http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00REf9?start=30

 

[PKR]

In a thread on photo.net, François P. Weill wrote:

"Unfortunately this approach is notorious to have lead the Master into completely botch all the rolls he took in May 1968, in Paris during one of the largest demonstration he covered, by extreme overexposure...

Due to the (justified) fame of "Monsieur" Cartier-Bresson the lab promptly realized inter-negatives to allow printing of the otherwise inexploitable shots... Any less famous Free-Lance photographer bringing back such films to the Press Agency would have been kicked in the a..s and fired on the spot ! ... "

http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00REf9?start=30

I don't have a lot of trouble working with b+w film sans meter. In the case above, I would think that one roll in the batch would be processed and if it were over exposed, the Dev would pulled to assist in a better Neg. Certainly after a number of rolls, all showing over exposure, an adjustment would be made. If HBC had produced printable film in the past and this group was problematic, it might be a shutter problem rather than all of the rolls suffering from poor exposure judgement. I'm no photo genius and can produce decent exposures (b+w Neg) without a meter. So, it's not hard to believe that C-B did this as well as, or better than I.

 

[LeicaM3]

Not being HCB, I don't use a meter either.
Mostly I use my M3, my M6 hasn't had a battery in it for years.

Do I malexpose some shots - yes.
But when I briefly used the M6 meter I missed a lot more shots by trying to get the metering right with the built-in rather than relying on my brain. And missing the right moment because of it.

 

[ZorkiKat]

Not being HCB, I don't use a meter either.
Mostly I use my M3, my M6 hasn't had a battery in it for years.

Do I malexpose some shots - yes.
But when I briefly used the M6 meter I missed a lot more shots by trying to get the metering right with the built-in rather than relying on my brain. And missing the right moment because of it.

That is so true. Depending on how one works, particularly in the style of the meterless cameras, having an onboard meter which always makes its presence known and always "nags" the necessary exposure settings by blinking red triangles may be a bad thing.

Exposure on BW film like TX need not be on the dot- a close-to-ball-park figure will suffice. Someone who has exposed a lot of film will likely be able to wisely estimate what the correct exposure setting should be.

But add an onboard meter, and then suddenly the photographer loses his confidence- those red blinking triangular LEDs can be like a nagging mother in law breathing down his neck - or brow, in the case of the M6- and destroy his otherwise confident bearing on those 1/250 sec f/11 exposures.

I've known how it is to miss more than a few moments because I had to deal and satisfy the blinking meter before pressing the shutter. The moment often flees before the meter is able to zero in.

Going back to the OT, I think I've seen one film clip of HCB using a meter to confirm whether the settings he felt were right were, right.