Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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) - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html