I've heard the litany that Henri Cartier-Bresson always used a Leica with a 50 mm lens. I'd seen a bunch of his shots before, but don't remember any celebrity portaits.

Yesterday in the library I was checking the new (and pricey) HC-B book (Tete a Tete) and it was hard to believe that he'd pulled off all those great shots with the Leica 50. Perhaps he did, and if so my hat is sure off to him. Even if he didn't, he has my continuing respect.

Does anyone out there know if he did use the Leica 50 for those celebrity shots? Some of them? None of them?

Thanks.

-- Paul Arnold (osprey@bmt.net), October 01, 1999

Answers

yes, he shot everything with a leica 50mm. bresson amazes me, the way he stretched a 50mm to shoot everything he found worth photographing.

-- hoko hoko (photoq@hotmail.com), October 02, 1999.

In the seventies the 35mm lens became popular, it was THE modern lens for photojournalistic work and the 50mm lens became forgotten and undervalued. Still no other focus can be made that good as a 50mm. I do not understand your growing admiration, would HCB be less if he did it with a 90?

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), October 02, 1999.

I don't know about all the portraits, but "Picnic on the River Marne" was shot with a 35mm Elmar, and "Old Woman Wrapped in an American Flag" was with a 90mm. He used an 85mm Summarex for the Beaumont Newhall portrait. I followed him around London one day in the 1970s, and he used an M-3 with a black-rim Summar. I love his "decisive moment" candids, but frankly think his celebrity portraits suck. Bill Mitchell

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), October 02, 1999.

Just to explain what I meant before: 50mm lenses are most easy to construct - relatively speaking - mainly because of the angle of view. In wide-angle the light comes in through a broader angle which causes much more aberrations. That's why there still aren't aspheric standard-lenses and no APO-standards. It's not worth the cost and effort; it would not have much surplus-value. The basic design of standard-lenses hasn't changed since a year or twenty and this why they are relatively cheap. This is quite different with other focal lenghts. Apart from this technical aspect a standard lens gives in my personal view the purest form of photography: you just don't need the distortion of perspective to say what you want to say. In this respect you could say that 28mm and/or 200mm is more for dilettants. When photography grows older and when individual photographers become mature the standard lens comes into view again.

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), October 02, 1999.