Winogrand technique with the 28mm

[Flyfisher Tom]

I have read that Winogrand favored 2 M4s mounted with 28mm lenses. Does anyone know which 28mm lenses he used, and whether he framed with a separate 28mm viewfinder or just the M4's viewfinder window as an approximation?

If you have any cites to articles/interviews where I can follow up on this, would be much appreciated, thanks.

 

[Huck Finn]

I wonder why two?

 

[pesphoto]

You can google Winogrand.
HERE IS ONE INTERVIEW

 

[Flyfisher Tom]

In case the women he photographed slapped him and he dropped one? Not sure

 

[Peter]

2 M4s so that there is no need to stop to reload and miss a shot! 🙂 Tried the same thing in my recent trip to Thailand and it works! In fact the more I work with 35mm focal length the more I find I need a wider perspective. When i switch to 50mm, I find the perspective looks like a short telephoto! 😛

 

[VinceC]

50mm actually is a short telephoto in the 35mm format. The "normal" lens is about 40-42mm -- that's why people like their 40mms and why 35mms can seem so "right."

 

[Toby]

Winograd used canon 28mm's according to my book on him

 

[Flyfisher Tom]

Winograd used canon 28mm's according to my book on him

Thanks, Toby ... may I ask which book that is? I would be interested in getting a copy if it is available in the US.

 

[aizan]

i'm gonna take a stab and say it's "the man in the crowd" by ben lifson. haven't nabbed a copy of it yet. =(

 

[gns]

I once ran into him at Venice Beach in Los Angeles. We walked for a ways together and talked as we went. I think he just had one camera, but that's not too interesting to me. It was interesting to see him shoot though. His young daughter was with him and he was holding her hand the whole time and holding his camera with the other. As we walked along, he would just raise his camera, frame and shoot in sort of a continuous motion. Nobody really payed attention. He wasn't hiding anything nor was he jumping around pointing this way and that. I can't say this was how he normally worked. Just what I observed on one day.

Tom,
I would say he was acting like a big lunker slowly making his way upstream. Taking in whatever came by on the current. Does that make sense to you?

Gary

 

[Toby]

Thanks, Toby ... may I ask which book that is? I would be interested in getting a copy if it is available in the US.

The Book is Winogrand - figments from the real world, Szarkovski, Museum of Modern Art, New York. It has a large introduction that talks in depth about his methods.

 

[Flyfisher Tom]

Tom,
I would say he was acting like a big lunker slowly making his way upstream. Taking in whatever came by on the current. Does that make sense to you?

Gary

Gary, it certainly does 🙂 Lunkers don't get big by dumb luck ... cheers

 

[ray_g]

I have read that Winogrand favored 2 M4s mounted with 28mm lenses. Does anyone know which 28mm lenses he used, and whether he framed with a separate 28mm viewfinder or just the M4's viewfinder window as an approximation?

If you have any cites to articles/interviews where I can follow up on this, would be much appreciated, thanks.

IIRC, he used the Canon 28/2.8. I can't remember where I read it, Tom. With my OCD, I will probably be sorting through my bookshelves tonight. 😉

 

[ChrisN]

That's interesting - 28mm on an M4 means that he was shooting wider than the framelines on the M4 show. I can't image him using an accessory viewfnder, with the technique described above.

 

[aizan]

The Book is Winogrand - figments from the real world, Szarkovski, Museum of Modern Art, New York. It has a large introduction that talks in depth about his methods.

maybe there are different editions, cuz i can't find any mention in my copy.

 

[sf]

why two? Color and black&white? I do that sometimes - did, when i had more than one camera.

 

[ChrisN]

I read a reference to him using two bodies that way (one for colour) at least for the cross-country trip in 1965.

"By any standard, Winogrand followed in the proud tradition of black and white street shooters, who worked by available light, often with silent-as-night rangefinder Leicas. Yet what makes Winogrand 1964 even more amazing is its generous amount of lush, wonderfully seen color work, most if not all shot on archival Kodachrome slide film. Winogrand "photographed freely in color in 1964, exposing approximately 100 rolls on the trip alone," Wilner writes. "Black and white still dominated [at least four to one], but the color camera was often raised just seconds before or after a black and white shot was taken."

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030131.htm

Otherwise, I guess a lot of pros who make their living from their cameras like to always have a spare handy.

 

[Elmar]

I have a few pictures of him in a book and they clearly show him in 1971 with two different Leicas, mainly chrome a M2 and a chrome M4 but no picture shows him with two cameras visable at once, although his son appears in a few shots with a chrome M2 with what looks like a Nikkor or Canon 50mm bright chrome lens.
Garry does have a small camera bag over one shoulder though. Lenses are a Leitz 21mm f4 Angulon with a Nikon 21mm finder and a Canon 25mm f3.5 and Canon finder, it looks like hes scale focusing them, I have bothe the 21/4 and the Canon 25/3.5 and both lenses have an enormous depth of field.
The M2 he has is fitted with a rewind crank with a fold down crank.
The book is "On the other side of the camera" by Arnold Crane.

 

[ChrisN]

I think you're right about scale-focusing, or relying on hyper-focal distance focusing. The article by Resnick (http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/winogrand.html) includes the following

He opened his camera bag. In it were two Leica M4's, equipped with 28mm lenses and dozens of rolls of Tri-X. The top of the bag was covered with yellow tabs. He told us he wrote light conditions on the tabs and put them on rolls as he finished them so he would know how to develop them.

That says to me that he was pushing or pulling the film in development, probably so that he could always use his smallest aperture and preferred shutter speed. With a 28mm lens at f16 and scale-focused at 2m, the depth of field ranges from just under 1m to infinity! Even at f8 and scale-focused at 3m, DOF is from 1.5m to infinity. That sounds like a good recipe for street-photography. Maybe the DOF issue is one of the drivers for using a 28mm lens.

 

[tom_f77]

There are some more snippets in this article by Mason Resnick that I've seen in various places... Not sure there's an answer in there, but it's interesting!

http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/xtol1.html

Tom