Would the masters of yesterday embrace the super wide lenses of today.

[tappan]

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I have read that Henri Cartier-Bresson's most used lens was a 50mm and that Robert Capa's choice was also a 50mm. When I think of the Leica m system historically, throughout the years, I think of a system that seems to want to shy away from distortion, a system that seems to be born for a more traditional view of a 35mm or 50mm. I enjoy shooting with my 35mm summicron and 24 elmarit. The Leica super wides of today, the 18mm and the 21mm appear to be masterpiece lenses. I was just wondering what some of the masters of yesterday would think about the 18mm and 21mm of today.

Mark

[pico]

Now you want us to be clairvoyants?

[tappan]

A new world record for you Pico. I thought for sure that it would take you at least 10 minutes to come up with a condescending remark.

Thanks,

Mark

[CalArts 99]

Just for the record, when I was in art school wide angle lenses were frowned upon since they were considered the tools of the photojournalist.

 

Of course things change and it seems there are clearly very popular now. But for me, it still carries that connotation every time I see the stretched corners. Nonetheless, I do use them once in a while myself. I just personally think you have to be very careful with them, but maybe that's just me.

[lars_bergquist]

Of course you cannot handle a real wide lens in the slap-happy manner that you can use a 50mm lens. It demands care and skill.

 

I have also pointed out that traditional Western "Renaissance" composition habits are mostly inapplicable to real wide lenses. The idea of the "central subject" with everything else cropped out or at least reduced to insignificance is behind much of the current craze for wide aperture "subject isolation", but it is irrelevant to wide angle photography.

 

I am not surprised to hear that artsy-fartsy photography teachers regard photojournalism as vulgar. Photography itself has been regarded as insufferably vulgar by the artsy set. And sharp pictures (ouch!) were seen as extremely vulgar, a view that lay behind the movement called "pictorialism". Fuzz was its business concept. Ignore the idiots.

 

Socrates decried writing because it allowed people to let their memorising ability to lapse, and because forcing a ready-made text upon people was akin to intellectual rape. Everything new is BAD! Always! Get it?

 

LB

[250swb]

I think any photographer with a camera bag full of high quality lenses will still have a preference, and with HCB it could still be a 50mm. But thats not to say they were or would be averse to new ideas, the very fact that he was using a 35mm camera in a world still dominated by the medium and large format camera shows he was willing to buck the trend for his art.

 

Lets not forget that when we talk about Leica 'quality' the high quality of the lenses was born out of necessity because in overall terms the quality of 35mm negatives was poor compared to normal journalistic and studio output. Some photojournalists in the 40's and 50's used 35mm and medium format because some magazines wouldn't accept 35mm. Personally I think if HCB were alive today he would be using a Leica X1 or any other small P&S of a high enough quality (so not even an M9) and wouldn't be bothered about exploring the extreme wild and wacky focal lengths.

 

Steve

[lct]

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HCB used to say that he did not like wides because they « gueulent » (shout):

 

« Moi, le 50mm c'est ma vie. Une certaine distance avec les gens.

Le grand angle gueule, et le 90mm me rappelle ces cornets acoustiques qu'utilisaient autrefois les vieilles dames. »

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photoportraits sans guillemets

Hervé Guibert, Le Monde 10/10/1985

Free translation:

The 50mm lens is my life. A certain distance with people.

The wide angle shouts, and the 90mm reminds me those ear trumpets that old ladies used to use in the past.

[azzo]

...

 

... The Leica super wides of today, the 18mm and the 21mm appear to be masterpiece lenses. I was just wondering what some of the masters of yesterday would think about the 18mm and 21mm of today.

 

Have no idea what they would think. ...

 

All I know is that, you cannot use either as though you're using a 50 or a 35mm.

An 18 or a 21mm have their own use IMO.

[alw]

Of course you cannot handle a real wide lens in the slap-happy manner that you can use a 50mm lens. It demands care and skill.

 

 

I believe 50mm is THE lens that shows whether you can frame shots or not. By no means can you use it in a carefree fashion. Then again, all lenses are a bit like that...

[Manolo Laguillo]

Let's go to the facts.

 

Robert Doisneau was wondering how Atget (no need to present him...) could have made certain photograph, so he went to the same place, that was more or less intact after the 50 years that had passed from the time it was photographed by Atget, and found out that Atget had used on his 18x24 camera a 120 mm, a focal length equivalent to a 18 mm on 24x36.

 

The point is that it's difficult to see that that photograph was made using such a super wide angle. Why? Because the verticals don't converge.

 

I'm quoting without having the book in front of me (A l'imparfait de l'objectif), but this Doisneau tells in a short text that is at the beginning of that recopilation. Reading that text by Doisneau many years ago was illuminating for me.

 

Many photographers were routinily using these lenses at the beginning of the 20th Century. Here in Spain we have for instance Brangulí. If they used them is because they were available. The need to cope with closed spaces has been always there.

 

I admire Cartier-Bresson's work infinitely, but his opinions are sometimes quite dogmatic, I would dare to say...

 

No need to put ethic into the choosing of a focal length. And if that's unavoidable, then I would say

 

1. the wide angle is less prone to manipulate "reality", with other words:

 

2. with the tele it is easier to cheat.

[lars_bergquist]

I am not surprised the see Brett Prestidge endorse the 50mm length, because he is very definitely a 50mm man. He uses that lens in situations, like weddings, where I would feel positively handcuffed by it. I am just as emphatically a 35mm man. But I find wider angles intriguing too, and the 21mm Super-Elmar is my new 'kept lady'. My point of view is that this is indeed a different point of view, and attempts to use a superwide lens the way you would a 'standard lens' (including a 35mm!) or to judge the pictures by that standard, are completely misguided. Different compositional principles apply.

 

When in the 1930's longer focus lenses (on medium format and 35mm cameras) became available, such pictures were invariably rejected by exhibition judges – club exhibitions were an important photographic venue in those days – and the photo magazines and handbooks were full of indignant cries that "the eyes don't see that way!" There were proposals that viewers should be constrained to view tele-lens pictures from such a long distance that the picture could just as well have been made by a standard lens, and cropped. And the outrage was even greater when wide angle pictures were shown.

 

Artistic conventions, no less than other conventions, have mostly been seen as divinely instituted parts of the cosmic plan. But fear not, we will learn. In the long run – when we are all dead, according to Mr. Keynes.

 

LB

[NZDavid]

...I was just wondering what some of the masters of yesterday would think about the 18mm and 21mm of today.

Mark

 

The masters of yesterday, were they shooting today, would embrace whatever tools best suited their artistic vision. The same applies in any age.

 

There's definitely a fashion in pictures, both PJ and commercial. Ultra wide angle has been trendy. Right in the heart of the action, view from thigh level. I have read that shallow DOF is increasingly in vogue. Some time ago tele shots used to be the thing.

 

Classic 50mm shots, whether by HCB or Brian Brake or others, have a timelessness about them.

 

I agree HCB would probably be using a high-quality compact today, possibly the X1. One of the last pictures of the master shows him using a Leica Minilux.

[bocaburger]

I don't think we can lump all the old masters together. Some artists find inspiration within the constraints of dogmatism, while others find that stifling and tend to be curious and flexible and open to change and innovation. Would Glenn Miller go electronic? Probably not. Benny Goodman? Quite possibly.

[rramesh]

A very speculative thread. Creativity is all about exploring new ways, different possibilities, breaking out of constraints, testing limits, exploring alternatives and changing perspectives.

 

There is no reason legends like HCB would not consider wide angle lenses or for that matter the new 41-Megapixel Nokia Pureview 808 launched yesterday if it could support his ideas and ambitions.

 

He might eventually throw it out but I believe with his creative genius he would still be taking great pictures, creatively working around the limitations of this device.

[pgk]

At the end of the day lenses are just tools. And selecting the right tool for the job in hand hasn't changed. If these new wides don't fulfill a photographer's needs then they won't be used by that photographer whoever they are/were.

[Peter H]

In my opinion, great photographers are not nearly as interested in cameras and lenses as they are in the world out there, and the things and people in it.

 

I can't imagine the old masters would have a different attitude from ours, though as we're all different, it's hard to generalise.

 

I hope that clarifies the issue!

[peter_n]

It does Peter. I think.

[gjames9142]

There has been a tendency for "street" photographers to go wider. Frank used 35 a lot. Winogrand 28. Friedlander a super wide Hasselblad with a 38 Biogon on MF. It's just a tendency. It's true about Atget -- he was a master of the wide angle, though when I went to look at a place where he had photographed at St. Cloud, I realized he had used a longer than normal lens. I once went out shooting with Andre Kertesz, who took great photographs all his life, and he was using a zoom, as do most photojournalists now with DSLR's. They are just tools. HCB wouldn't have given a hoot if he came back, because at the end of his life, he was only interested in drawing. I don't know any major photographers who use 50's as a standard, but that doesn't stop anyone from using them.

[CalArts 99]

There has been a tendency for "street" photographers to go wider. Frank used 35 a lot. Winogrand 28. Friedlander a super wide Hasselblad with a 38 Biogon on MF. It's just a tendency. It's true about Atget -- he was a master of the wide angle, though when I went to look at a place where he had photographed at St. Cloud, I realized he had used a longer than normal lens. I once went out shooting with Andre Kertesz, who took great photographs all his life, and he was using a zoom, as do most photojournalists now with DSLR's. They are just tools. HCB wouldn't have given a hoot if he came back, because at the end of his life, he was only interested in drawing. I don't know any major photographers who use 50's as a standard, but that doesn't stop anyone from using them.

 

Although the OP was asking about the super wides, 18mm and 21mm specifically. I personally don't think the 35 and 28 lenses really venture too much into that more 'extreme' territory. I still have this issue of the connotation of 'reportage' associated with super wides, I suppose because we do see them so much in newspaper and web reporting these days. Maybe it's just me but I see them as somewhat 'fashionable' these days and more so than in the past. The super wides do seem more popular as lens purchases. But maybe I'm wrong.

 

Here's an example of two of Winogrand's images next to one of mine in this publication: merrellpublishers.com

 

If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see some thumbnail examples from the book. Mine is on the right side of Winogrand's photos (it's the color triptych made up of three individual images.) I did that on 6x9 film with a 90mm lens which is about 39mm equivalent in 35. The two Winogrand shots are clearly with a wider lens. Different subject matter yes, but also very different perspectives with perhaps the wide being more akin to current styles of reportage (or simply akin to current style, and not only reportage.)

 

But yeah, who really cares. The final image is all that matters. Whatever it takes to make the end product work. But we still have to live with the connotations of a particular 'style' and yes, that of course shifts in meaning over time. And everything we see within the frame is certainly loaded. It makes image making all the more challenging.

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[Manolo Laguillo]

Regarding my post #10 I would like to tell you that I've found the book and I must correct myself: Doisneau says Atget used a 150mm:

 

"Je possède deux épreuves originales d'Atget. L'une représente l'Hôtel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, et l'autre le passage Vandrezanne. Deux endroits qui n'ont pas retenu l'attention des promoteurs. A part quelques détails modifiés, leur physionomie de décors d'antan reste la même. Me guidant, avec ses épreuves à la main pour placer une chambre 18 x 24 dans ses traces, j'ai vérifié ce que je pensais : il utilisait une focale de 150 mm. donc relativement courte pour ce format, et qui convenait parfaitement aux photographies urbaines."

 

(pages 20 & 21 in the aforementioned book)

 

On an 8x10'' a 150mm is like a 21mm on 24x36. On a 18x24 cm it's a bit longer.