Which Magnum Photographers use mostly digital cameras

[maciejgapinski]

Alex Majoli - all shots with an Olympus OM-D EM-5

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...egypt-presidential-elections-alex-majoli.html

 

[BobYIL]

Alex Majoli - all shots with an Olympus OM-D EM-5

Even with digital, in the chaos of having to transmit the pictures in minutes I wonder how the guys like Majoli or Webb handle such fine PP to look closer to film.. As if I still see their style with digital too.

(We still have a lot to learn from these guys..)

 

[emraphoto]

Even with digital, in the chaos of having to transmit the pictures in minutes I wonder how the guys like Majoli or Webb handle such fine PP to look closer to film.. As if I still see their style with digital too.

(We still have a lot to learn from these guys..)

neither Majoli nor Webb shoot wire. transmitting in minutes is not an issue for them

 

[maciejgapinski]

one 20mm lens BTW.
suppose it's the Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 ASPH

 

[rxmd]

I had a look at the postcardsfromamerica tumblr exifs and found as follows:

Alex Webb and Bruce Gilden - M9
Jim Goldberg - S2
Alec Soth - Hasselblad H4D-40
Paolo Pellegrin - 5dM3
Martin Parr and Susan Meiselas - 5dM2
Larry Towell - 7D

Damn, didn't realize that Alec Soth and Jim Goldberg were raking in the duckets to afford those monsters.

How many working professionals can afford a new Leica system anyway?

There is a fair number of professions where the tools of the trade cost five-digit amounts. Nothing special. If it earns them the money, they will buy it.

To put things in perspective, for example, compare photographers to taxi drivers. There are places where you can't start a taxi business at all, unless you buy an existing taxi concession from somebody else. And those cost real money; that cabbie whom you toss $10 may have paid half a million for his license. And there are other places where this trade in concessions is illegal, so that you can't use them as an investment, but where you can't start a new taxi business until you can prove that (a) the taxi is yours, (b) you didn't buy the taxi on credit, (c) you have the spare money to buy a new taxi if yours is destroyed, (d) this spare money wasn't taken on credit either. Either way, the cameras up there in the list are all cheaper than that.

 

[d_ross]

Even with digital, in the chaos of having to transmit the pictures in minutes I wonder how the guys like Majoli or Webb handle such fine PP to look closer to film.. As if I still see their style with digital too.

(We still have a lot to learn from these guys..)

Maybe they just take photos and don't f around with them in PP 🙂

 

[jordanstarr]

...I was going to say that Alex sent me an email and mentioned something about his 2 Leica m9s that he mainly shoots with now. Bruce G shoots a mixed bag, but I think he recent series on "foreclosures" is on film, if I'm not mistaken. I was a subscriber to David Alan Harvey's "Rio Project" blog for month that he shot there and none of it was film, mostly DSLR (Nikon) and about half of the shots that made the cut for the project where taken with his iPhone, surprisingly. He spent a significant percentage of time on his blog justifying using an iphone for a lot of his shots.

 

[Jamie Pillers]

How sad it is to observe that those who made Leica what it was have switched to other brands.

Professionals have obligations to fulfill, targets to realize. What they are supposed to deliver can only be accomplished with cameras offering up-to-date technologies; not unlike what surgeons, dentists or engineers need to perform their professions. They too have figured out since long that Leica is "hopeless" in this regard.

(They do not have the luxury of sticking to brands or recording media like most of us enjoy; as their profession dictate to face far more demanding situations then what we think they do.)

Why sad? There have been mass switches in the past as well. WWII era roughly, lots of pros moved to Nikon. They move to whatever gets the job done easiest and with the least hassle, I'd imagine.

 

[om.ch]

Hard to imagine any are hurting for work--should they ever want it.

Yes and no, I remember meeting Dominic Nahr in HK and when he was explaining the way the projects are funded, usually out of your own pocket hoping to get the money back once you sell the story, you know that you don't get into Magnum for the money. I vaguely remember a story of sleeping in the car of his translator/friend in Japan at freezing temp for his nuclear series.

He has got some digital M gear but it was given to him by Leica that he was using for his nuclear series, he shoots mainly with a DSLR (5D MkII?).

link to that specific story: http://lightbox.time.com/2011/03/14/amid-japans-devastation/

 

[BobYIL]

How interesting that the cameras used by the majority of them are affordable for most of us too.

It's obvious that digital contributed to photography in many ways film could not. One of them is satisfactory results for web can be obtained by a wide spectrum cost of cameras and sensor sizes.

BTW, we can continue on debating about whether an OM-D would suffice to cope up with our expectations while a certain Alex Majoli on the other side turning out photographs with the same camera to impress the world.

 

[stillshunter]

BTW, we can continue on debating about whether an OM-D would suffice to cope up with our expectations while a certain Alex Majoli on the other side turning out photographs with the same camera to impress the world.

....yes but let's not forget that Mr Majoli is the exact same photographer that blew us all away 10 years or so ago with field images from digicams .....Olympus P&S like the C4040, C5050, C8080, etc. If I recall they started at something like 4MP and still had a sensor smaller than the fingernail on my pinkie.

Just goes to prove a craftsmen is a craftsmen irrespective of the tools you put in their hands. IMHO

Curious quote from Alex in the above article:

Though he has had great success with his point-and-shoot cameras, Majoli has some improvements he'd like to see. When you add them up, they describe an enticing synthesis of the old and the new.

"I miss the strongest of the old generation cameras -- Olympus OM-1, the Leica. The dream would be a digital camera the size of the C-5060 -- not bigger than a Leica, let's say -- with exchangeable lenses. Small lenses. I would like to see fixed lenses, not zooms. Maybe some bigger apertures -- f/1.8. The file is fine. I don't need 20 million megapixels."

I think these cameras have well and truly arrived.....but yet we need more!!!!

 

[BobYIL]

I would not wonder if a great deal of PJs switch to OM-D within two years. Just two lens, a Summilux 25/1.4 and the new 12-35/2.8 zoom to cover the majority of assignments. All smaller than a D700, but 9 fps!. (Funny but this is next to the D4! 🙂 )

 

[BobYIL]

I remember when Majoli was using the Olympus P&S digitals. He packed 6 of them as they would fail from poor build quality (not designed for tough field work). He said that the 6 he carried were lighter in weight than his previous 2 camera Canon kit.

I don't know about Oly. If they turn out to be a tough camera with few repair issues, you may see them in use for a long time. As for the D700, it's a big camera when placed side by side with any m43 camera. The D700 has it's place - it's a great camera. If I was planning digital field work (leave in the next 30 days), I would likely carry 2 x GX1 w/optical + EVF finders + 1 OM-D and maybe 2 primes and 1 zoom. It's great that m43 share the same mount. It would be even better if they shared the same batteries and chargers.

It says "magnesium body and fully weather proofed". Certainly designed for pros in mind too.