Do you follow Henri Cartier-Bresson or do you change cameras / lenses during a shoot ??

I only use the ‘normal’ lens for whatever format I’m shooting. 50 for 35mm or around an 80 for 120 film. I’ve other lenses but 99% of my keepers are shot with the normal lens.

I’ve usually enough stuff to carry, haven’t taken a second lens to a shoot for years. I’ve a trusty Nikon FM2 camera with a 50mm attached in the boot as a backup.

I shoot with a Fuji XT5 with an XT30 as a spare....rarely used.

My standard lens is the Fuji 24-70mm f2.8 eqivalent but I take 30mm  f1.4, a 12mm f2 manual focus and a fish eye.

I want to be able to range around and change the perspective.

With lots of pixels to play with, I overcrop in camera giving myself a lot of latitude to pley in post processing.

I do a lot of editing and regard the image in the camera as a simple starting point.

This I am sure might be and indeed will be, regarded a worthy of being sent to Hell.

Whilst I am entirely happy to do what I want to do there are many photographers, past and present who subscribe to these ideas.

Dennis Bloodnok Photography I usually end up changing the lens and I use two or three cameras but that's because I like to try different effects and looks and am still getting use to the different camera set ups and lenses.

if you know what your doing you'll probably just stick to one system.

the problem with manual focus lenses on digital cameras is the brightness and view in the viewfinder is appalling especially with the lack of a traditional split screen but with mirrorless you don't have that problem.

Henri Cartier-Bresson obviously found a system that worked for him, sticking to one format is easier for sure but you have to have found your niche first. I could probably get away with shooting on a leica but it's kind of snap-shot-ey and I think I prefer the clunk and awkwardness of a bigger more cumbersome system. it feels right and I like it. I may get a leica one day and try it though, maybe useful as a spare or for carrying light.

Edited by parkway

Most of my portraits are taken using a 50mm lens, but I do take a spare camera with a 35mm lens in case I need to do say a wider body shot, but I only shoot with film anyway, so the whole process is slowed down and whilst having a couple of cameras means that if needed, I can spend a little less time stopping to change a roll of film, but to be honest having a break for a chat is part of the fun and relationship building time, which I think is important part of the process

Edited by Glenn Ashbrooke Film Photography

Re: H C-B: he genuinely is as close to a "one single camera and lens his entire career" photographer as most will get -- almost all his career he used a single M3 with a collapsible 50mm Summicron that Leica kept maintained for him, famously going to the point of getting that Summicron re-coated. But he must therefore have had either a loaner or a backup M3, and some people say he also used a faster 50mm Zeiss.  Before the M3 was released he used a Leica III and a collapsible Elmar. Plus there are some wide-angle photos in his work, and there are photos of him with his M3 with a wide-angle rangefinder in the hotshoe, so he presumably owned something wider than a 50mm, which is the widest frameline on his M3.

(Fun fact: after he retired to be a painter he still carried a Leica -- but it was a Minilux. Before he died, when he was in his late eighties or early nineties, he got into a disagreement with a photographer -- David Douglas Duncan -- who published a book of photos of him, saying the photos invaded his privacy. It was covered in AP at the time. He had a Minilux with him in those photos.)

I think this idea of having a huge arsenal of lenses is a relatively recent one and it is a hobbyist/collector thing as much as anything else; generally speaking, the harder a photographer is working, the less kit swaps they are going to do.

I am not that hard-working or disciplined, but generally I don't carry much or switch much. When I was using my Nikons, if I had enough room, like thoroughly.exposed , I would preferentially only use an 85mm f/1.8 D, switching back to a 50mm f/1.8 D when I needed to be wider. I prefer the perspective guardrails you get from simple pairings like that, and I adore that 85mm. At gigs I use pretty much only a 50mm on mirrorless, these days.

I am, on and off, designing my own vintage-soft-focus lens with the aim of getting something in the 58-64mm-ish range that I can use fairly broadly. 

parkway said

Dennis Bloodnok Photography I usually end up changing the lens and I use two or three cameras but that's because I like to try different effects and looks and am still getting use to the different camera set ups and lenses.

if you know what your doing you'll probably just stick to one system.

the problem with manual focus lenses on digital cameras is the brightness and view in the viewfinder is appalling especially with the lack of a traditional split screen but with mirrorless you don't have that problem.

Henri Cartier-Bresson obviously found a system that worked for him, sticking to one format is easier for sure but you have to have found your niche first. I could probably get away with shooting on a leica but it's kind of snap-shot-ey and I think I prefer the clunk and awkwardness of a bigger more cumbersome system. it feels right and I like it. I may get a leica one day and try it though, maybe useful as a spare or for carrying light.

Edited by parkway

Yes , I changed camera and lens several times during my recent shoots. As you say, it creates differing effects for different images. But H C-B was an amazing photographer who only needed a single camera and lens combination.

Dennis Bloodnok Photography he also had good architecture and subject matter to hand. you gotta just love these old style photographers. inspiring work.

JPea said

I shoot with a Fuji XT5 with an XT30 as a spare....rarely used.

My standard lens is the Fuji 24-70mm f2.8 eqivalent but I take 30mm  f1.4, a 12mm f2 manual focus and a fish eye.

I want to be able to range around and change the perspective.

With lots of pixels to play with, I overcrop in camera giving myself a lot of latitude to pley in post processing.

I do a lot of editing and regard the image in the camera as a simple starting point.

This I am sure might be and indeed will be, regarded a worthy of being sent to Hell.

Whilst I am entirely happy to do what I want to do there are many photographers, past and present who subscribe to these ideas.

Yep. I don't have many pixels to play with but, even so, I almost always shoot a bit 'wide' to give a few options for cropping at the editing stage.  

Photowallah said

I guess the thing which has changed, more than anything else, is the cost of "spare" camera bodies relative to lenses.

I couldn't really contemplate the cost of 2 digital cameras hanging around my neck, never mind the weight.

The logic of carrying multiple cameras and still swapping lenses, I'm afraid, escapes me.

Two cameras, three lenses, almost all of it secondhand. At my busiest hobby phase when I was covering two four-day festivals a year more or less single-handed, I used a 35mm, a 50mm and an 85mm, all cheap f/1.8 or f/2 versions, and two bodies: one full-frame, one smaller 1.5x APS-C. A slightly odd combination but it provided both effective backup pairs and the ability to choose different pairs. As to the expense: my life was pretty cheap otherwise and this was my only vice, I guess. Not going out apart from gigs I didn't have to pay to get into, not drinking, not smoking, is quite a lot of camera.

When I stopped doing that so seriously and began shooting more experimentally, I went to simpler arrangements: NEX-6 with a Voigtländer 35mm Color Skopar, A7II with a Helios 44-2 or an old Canon 50mm f/1.8. 

I only once lost a camera at a festival. A Canon G10. I was quite annoyed when it turned up again. 

Unfocussed Mike said

....I only once lost a camera at a festival. A Canon G10. I was quite annoyed when it turned up again. 

Reminds me of the time my mate had his Ford Corsair nicked. Like you with that camera, he was sorely disappointed when it was found. (Even more so when he had to go from Bristol to Haverfordwest to collect it.)  

It really depends on the shoot, the setting, the client and your own confidence to get the shot you want etc. I'm not a 'machine gun' shooter - I don't fire thousands of frames simply because I can. Using digital, I dont' shoot any more frames than I would when I shot on film - I always plan to get the image technically right in camera at the shoot time.

Most of the time, my kit had to travel with me in my everyday role so I was limited by what I could carry and what I could carry kit in as my employers had strict rules about the baggage I could carry- this constrained me to a DSLR body and generally 2 lenses and a couple of Speedlights.
When working on more relaxed terms I'd carry a couple of bodies each with the lenses I was most likely to use on that shoot.

However, for one shoot, I terrified the Creative Director when I turned up on the shoot location with a single Nikon F3, a 50mm lens and a single roll of Ilford FP4 24 exposure film.

So, its all about what's going to get the job done.

And the creative director still can't believe I had the exact image he wanted in less than 20 mins, having shot 11 frames..

Orson Carter said

Unfocussed Mike said

....I only once lost a camera at a festival. A Canon G10. I was quite annoyed when it turned up again. 

Reminds me of the time my mate had his Ford Corsair nicked. Like you with that camera, he was sorely disappointed when it was found. (Even more so when he had to go from Bristol to Haverfordwest to collect it.)  

Hehe. 

Yep. Nobody nicked it, it turns out, but honestly I was quite enjoying imagining the hypothetical thief trying to use the G10 and thinking "wait, I committed crime for this terrible thing?"

I actually sold it secondhand for almost what I had paid for it new.  Now that felt like a crime!

Edited by Unfocussed Mike

i switch between 85/50/35  throughout a shoot in a studio, i love 35 for full body and 85 for the portrait - and 50mm when the models all over the place!

I apologize for hurting feelings as I say this... But this discussion is so pointless that I had to jump in

The discussion started with the comparison of the shooting style/equipment choices of one of the greatest photographers on the 19th century, someone who helped define black and white photographic art. And frankly none of us (me included) should be remotely comparing ourselves to him in any way... 

Follow Henri Cartier-Bresson? Really? Please do not bring down the greatness of such an artist by trying to imply that you following his style or not (in equipment or otherwise) even makes you worthy of having a discussion like this...

Just stop this madness 😅