[Leica] f8 and be there HCB and everyone else

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

You can still buy his printer, Voja Mitrovic's offerings:

http://www.peterturnley.com/prints/

Cheers
Jayanand


On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> 
wrote:

> 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/
>
>
>
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