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1 hour ago, Steve Ricoh said:

Michael Kenna demonstrated that a good photographer can make excellent images with any camera - refer to his images taken with a simple Holga.

I think so.

Thinking of Jacques Henri Lartigue who proved the thing all his life time.

a link (if need be)

or more , in English

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9 hours ago, RayD28 said:

In western music there are 12 notes.  Country, folk, rock, and blues are mostly written in 4/4 time.  A few tools and yet new songs written every day.  

There are a lot of similar sounding tunes around, and the number of court cases on the topic seem to be increasing. 

Whilst we off-topic a bit, I came to the conclusion that many photos have indeed already been taken. So I don't bother taking a photo of most well known landmarks when I'm on travel unless a family member is standing in front of it of course. No point in collecting my own documentary photographs on many items when I can find better and more images on the internet. Before all that detailed high-quality footage was available so easily it was indeed of great interest to see photos from intrepid travelers/explorers but now you need to find somewhere off the beaten track and that's getting really hard on this planet. 
We also look for inspiration at other photographers, such as HCB, and we go and reproduce them - or key elements of them, but perhaps in a different location or with a different person. Is that the same or different is up to you.   

The thing that is key about HCB for *me* is not what camera he used, but that he learned how to use his equipment to get what he wanted and we are all capable of doing that with the equipment we already own. But can you 'see' the images like he could ? If you can't do that then the equipment won't help you. 

We live at a different time from HCB, so we can see things that were not available to him and perhaps we should look to make our own images from our time.

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As far as HCB goes I seem to remember that in the pic which I saw he had a Leica CL with the 40mm Summicron. I could well be mistaken (I saw the pic MANY years ago) but that combination, given what we know about HCB, would make a lot of sense.

Philip.

Edited by pippy
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5 hours ago, jaapv said:

A lot of stuff about HCB is apocryphal;  here is the nonsense Ken Rockwell wrote, for instance.

Most of what Cartier Bresson said was apochryphal!

I did make the mistake of reading the article in the link … holey moley … what a load of batshit!

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At the risk of taking this all too seriously, I know of two photographs of HCB using the Leica CL.

In the first, the lens is the collapsible 50mm Summicron (ie V1) and the camera has an optical viewfinder. It's clear what the lens is because the photo is taken from the side and you can see the lens extended. It's his lens with the black front. He's wearing a black or dark jacket and a tie.

The second photo is a self portrait and the lens appears to be the 35mm Summicron with a hood. The photo was taken in a beauty salon in New Jersey and HCB is framed in one of the mirrors.  The camera has an optical viewfinder and HCB is shooting left eyed.

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C'est une façon de vivre.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

from here, see the last sentence

In English, this may be hard to translate.

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Summarit 1.5/50 ...

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

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The most cringe making question at any camera club is when someone asks a visiting photographer " What lens did you use to take that photo?". In my experience, great photographers do not talk about their gear, they talk about their images, how they made them and what drove them to capture them. The cameras and lenses they used are but tools and the results we see are from their ability and imagination. I have never heard a writer being asked " What pen/typewriter/PC did you use to write this novel?". 

I know that HCB used Leicas and his first one was a I Model A, but my interest ends there. What is more interesting is watching how he took photographs:

There is a longer version here:

William 

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