Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/06/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]According to Harry Lime who was portrayed by Orson Welles in Carol Reed?s 1949 film The Third Man HCB was an F8 and be there kind of guy. To me more specific his default camera setting was 5 meters at f8 @ 125th of a second. Huge disruptive news perhaps on the LUG but it was pretty close to the way everyone HCB ever met in the photographic world. Even before asa / iso 4oo became a standard. This guy going by Harry Lime is writing this in oct 2006 (my first month in NY) on the Rangefinder Forum. http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-29333.html Excerpts of his post: That said here is some technical insight into HCB's work. Pre-war he shot with a 3.5/50 Elmar and it seems whatever film he could get his hands on, apparently Kodak being his preference. He shot a 1.5/50 Zeiss Sonnar in LTM mount for a few years after the war. You can see some pictures of him working in China with this setup. I believe he mostly shot Kodak Double X (SS?) around this time. >From the mid 1950's until his death, his primary lens was a collapsible 2/50 Summicron that had the front end of it's barrel painted black. This is when the lens cap with the finger-loop appears. There are some pictures showing him at work with a 2/50 Summicron Rigid (type2), but HCB liked to be able to slip his Leica in his pocket, which is difficult to do, unless you are using the collapsible Cron. His favorite postwar combination was Tri-X developed in 777. At this time 777 was the standard replenishable mystery brew in use at LIFE, Magnum and many other high volume labs. You can still purchase 777 from http://www.frugalphotographer.com/. I have a friend who uses it and he claims that it produces beautiful negs with a huge tonal scale and a certain pearly glow. HCB's printer was instructed to respect the medium gray at all costs. You rarely see HCB prints that are high in contrast. Most of them are a gorgeous, pearly collection of grays, with few true blacks and absolute white. >From the earliest days HCB used the same black paint VIDOM viewfinder. This is the technical secret in regards to the framing accuracy he achieved with an RF camera. His standard settings were f8 at 125/th with the focus set to 15ft (5 meters) HCB shot the majority of his work with a 50, but also kept a 35 and 90 (landscapes) in his bag, but very rarely used them. But most important he was incredibly talented and trained as a fine artist. -- Mark William Rabiner Photography http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/