Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/10

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Subject: [Leica] Re: War Photographer - James Nachtwey - OT
From: Cummer <cummer@netvigator.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 07:21:22 +0800
References: <200304101651.JAA24344@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>

Hello Luggers,
Went last night to see Christian Frei's documentary "War 
Photographer" on the work of James Nachtwey, which is showing as part 
of the Hong Kong film festival.
It was strange how many face masks were displayed, both in the film, 
when photographers had to wear them while filming corpses in Kosovo, 
and most of the Hong Kong audience was wearing them too. Mr. Nachtwey 
uses two Canon EOS1 film cameras, one fitted with a wide angle zoom, 
a 17- 35 I think and the other with a fixed wide angle. The film 
opened with a quotation from Robert Capa which said that if your 
images are not powerful enough you are not close enough. And that is 
what Nachtwey practices - getting in low and close - to produce 
striking images - of war and suffering. He shoots Tri X 400 and 
manages to get his lab man to produce spectacular 20 X 40 exhibition 
prints and for this documentary attached a micro cam to his camera so 
that you see in the video what he sees in making the photograph. He 
uses an incident light meter to check readings, shoots his cameras on 
manual, with the shutter speed at 1/250 (or higher) and doesn't use 
autofocus, or at least manually adjusts the autofocus. If you have 
the chance to see this Swiss documentary, I would recommend it. He is 
working these days in Iraq.
Howard Cummer
Hong Kong (and wearing a mask in public places)
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Replies: Reply from "Paul Jones" <lug@nrg666.com> (Re: [Leica] Re: War Photographer - James Nachtwey - OT)