“Naturally I take full advantage of the possibilities of different lenses, but I don’t carry a suitcase full of them: an Elmar 50mm, a wide-angle 35mm, and an 85mm − these are my tools, with, of course, the latest, the f/1.5, for night photography. I take advantage of these various depths, I open or close the shutter, or I leave a full aperture: it depends on my needs.”
‘A Reporter, Interview with Daniel Masclet (1951)’ in Henri Cartier-Bresson, Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998, p.13 (2017)
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Cartier-Bresson on the ideal lens
“The 50mm. Not the 35mm: it’s too big, too wide! With that, photographers all think they are Tintoretto. Even if everything is sharp, it is still a distortion. With the 50mm, you keep a certain distance. I know, they are going to say again that I am ‘classic’. I don’t care: to me, the 50mm remains the closest thing there is to the human gaze. You can shoot everything with it − streets, landscapes, or portraits. When you have the eye of a painter and a visual grammar, you work with a 50mm without even thinking that with a 35mm you’d get more depth of field. Painting, drawing, photography, documentary film: to me, it’s all one.”
‘We Always Talk Too Much, Conversation with Pierre Assouline (1994)’ in Henri Cartier-Bresson, Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998, p.134 (2017)
The sloppy 35mm photographer
The sloppy generation is made up of those who think the 35-mm camera is so simple to use that it can do everything merely by sighting and pressing the button. Everything about the camera invites careless behavior on the part of the photographer. It is such a marvelous precision instrument that the uninitiated get the impression it will do the technical job willy-nilly. See how easy it is: Read the builtin meter, set the shutter, focus, press the button, advance the film, shoot again. Film is cheap, shoot fast, advance, click, advance, click until the roll is used up… all the while forgetting the little things that demand clear thinking and seeing: the way the light falls, composition, background, gestures, expressions, camera angle, decisive moment. Film is cheap, just shoot away, and on the law of averages you’re bound to come up with good pictures. A monkey could do that?
Bruce Downes, “Is 35-mm producing a generation of sloppy photographers?”, Popular Photography, 43(2) p.43(1958)
On the colour of vintage cameras
White is out, except on a few vintage models. Real gold is definitely out unless one was given a gold one by the manufacturers for being such a good photographer. So are animal skins (snake, mink or otherwise). But most important, all colours that look right for boats lost at sea (orange, red, yellow, etc.) are wrong for real cameras. This is because cameras finished in vivid colours may reflect onto the subject and thus produce unnatural hues in the final results.
The key choice is then between chrome and black. Most standard finishes are black and chrome but the status element increases as the total volume of chrome reduces, and the black increases. An all black camera, made thus by the manufacturers, is the hallmark of the very serious amateur and some professionals. Slightly upmarket of this is the mixed chrome/black example with the chrome bits hand-painted matt black. This spells dedicated amateur or the professional who is important enough not to care and does not have to answer to a newspaper for the equipment. The finishing touch in this scale is the odd spot of white paint on all the dials at the most commonly used settings. Definitely the ultimate professional image or superb fakery.
John Courtis ‘Bluff your way in photography’ (1993)
Sense and nonsense
People expressing themselves in speech or writing are generally rather careful to avoid saying anything that might stamp them fools. Not so photographers, if one is to judge by the flood of trite and boring pictures published year in and year out in photographic magazines and annuals and shown in exhibitions. Using an analogy with speech, most of these pictures are as hackneyed as saying that a rose is a rose is a rose; they repeat what has already been said a thousand times before; they say badly what others have said better; or they say nothing at all, in which case they are visual gibberish, meaningless statements toward which a viewer’s reaction can only be, So what?
Andreas Feininger, The Perfect Photograph (1974)
Keppler on DSLR menus
What do I truly hate about DSLRs? Menus. Particularly menus I need to consult for ISO settings and/or white balance. Buttons marked ISO and WB with direct access do me fine. But what do I really want? A comfy, rugged, gem-like compact, four-control, digital Leica 1(A). You can leave off all the ornamental stuff. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Herbert Keppler, Like a Leica (Popular Photography, August 2007, pp.50-51)
Keppler on collecting
Among the many things I resent about digital imaging is the slamming of the door on one of my favorite hobbies, camera collecting. Aside from getting a discontinued model cheap to use as a backup, can you tell me why someone would be excited about buying an obsolete digital camera for any purpose other than to use as a doorstop?
Herbert Keppler, On the joys of collecting. (Popular Photography & Imaging, August 2007)
Beaton on failure
A technical “failure” which shows some attempt at aesthetic expression is of infinitely more value than an uninspired “success”.
Cecil Beaton in Photography (Odhams, 1951)
Feininger on motion
In contrast to “moving pictures”, every single photograph, even the most violent action shot, is a “still”. Nothing that happens in time and space − a change, a motion − can be photographed instantaneously without stripping it of its most outstanding quality : movement, the element of time . . . . No ordinary action shot can “reproduce” an action, because it reduces change and movement − the basis of all action − to a standstill, freezing it into immobility. . . . In photographing action, more than anywhere else in still photography, we must rely on “symbols” and on “translation”, if we are to capture the essence of that action in a “still”.
Feininger on Photography (1949)
Feininger on seeing
“Photographers — idiots, of which there are so many — say, ‘Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs.”’ That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It’s nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest. That’s what makes a good photograph.”
Andreas Feininger in an interview with American Society of Media Photography (1990)
Crafting Pixels 