Cartier-Bresson; What Cameras And Focal Lengths Did He Use And Why? I Think I Know What But I'm Not Sure About Why

Henri Cartier-Bresson

When I started out in photography in the early 1970s, the norm was to buy a camera with a fixed focal length prime lens—the “kit” lens of the time.  That focal length typically centered around 50mm.  Some cameras came with lenses just a little longer and some with lenses a bit shorter in focal length, but 50mm was typical.  At the time, I didn’t know why?  So, I asked.

What I remember being told was that the 50mm focal length represented how we see the world around us—the undistorted perspective of how our eyes work with the brain.  I’m not agreeing nor disagreeing, but that is what I want told at the time.

It was and still is called a ‘normal lens’ for the 35mm (or full frame digital) format.  The diagonal of a 35mm frame (24mm x 36mm) is about 43mm and that is close to 50mm.  Also, I believe, because of the sort of ‘neutral’ focal length, a high quality 50mm lens is relatively easy and inexpensive to manufacturer.  So, to include it as a kit lens didn't cost the manufacturers much and the buyer received a pretty decent lens.

My first single lens reflex (SLR) camera was a Minolta SR-T 101.   Mine came with a Minolta Rokkor 55mm f1.7 lens.  I still have them and both still function perfectly.  I used that lens exclusively for several years.  I never even thought about buying another lens.   I learned how to photographically ‘see’ with it.   Eventually though, I started to believe that moving to the next level meant using different focal lengths and achieving different looks for my images in some cases.  I still think learning with that one lens really helped me keep things simple while learning the basics of photography.  Too many lenses, too much experimentation, too many options are just distractions when you are a beginner trying to learn.  The standard lens was perfect for me.  

One of the ways I learned photography was to read books, magazines and look at photographs from famous photographers.  Of course, there was no Internet back then nor personal computers.  As a budding photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was a big influence on me.  I really admired his eye, his timing and his resulting photographs.  He was help up to all of us as ‘the master.’  I loved Cartier-Bresson's work and, wanting to better myself as a photographer, I looked extensively at and studied his photographs and naturally wondered what cameras and lenses he used.  I think that still holds true for most of us today.  We see images we admire and naturally wonder what (at least) lens was used if not the camera as well.  For decades I read that he only used a 50mm lens on a Leica camera.  Was that true?  If so, I wondered why?  But was what I heard difinitive?  If so, why did he not use many other focal lengths for his photography?  So I finally did a bit of research and this is what I discovered.  What’s written below is a composite of information I found in various places on the internet—paraphrased and summarized.

Cartier-Bresson (HCB) is considered one of the greatest photojournalists of all time, let alone the 20th century.  He was a master with what used to be called a ‘miniature camera.’  The cameras he used throughout his decades of producing some of the most iconic photographs ever made were a series of 35mm Leicas.  From my knowledge, Leica was ‘the’ camera brand to have and use for decades—especially for photojournalists and documentary photographers.

His early years, in the 1930s, were spent with the Leica I and Leica II.  With them he used the modest 50mm Elmar f/3.5 lens.  That lens shaped the way he saw the world as he thought it should be seen—balanced and free of perspective exaggeration.  During these first years, while photographing on the streets of France, Spain and in Italy, it is said he may have occasionally experimented with a 35mm Elmar, but it seems those moments were brief.  It was the 50mm to which he always returned.  (Editor’s [me] comment:  Gee whiz.  How in the world did he manage to make great photographs without having a lens with a maximum aperture of f/1.2 or f/1.4 as we are told we have to have today? [sarcasm, of course]).

Into the 1940s and the founding of Magnum Photos in 1947, his camera and lens models updated but his focal length did not.  He began using Leica III bodies with the faster 50mm f/2 Summitar and later in the 1950s, the Leica M3 with the 50mm f/2 Summicron.  These were the years in which he traveled through China, India, Indonesia, and postwar Europe.  The M3 and the Summicron became his day-to-day pairing.  Cartier-Bresson often explained that the 50mm matched the way he instinctively perceived scenes.   He said, “The 50mm lens is my eye.”  He repeated versions of this idea throughout his life, emphasizing that the 50mm gave him neither distortion nor compression—just simplicity and truth.  “A 35mm lens distorts too much,” he remarked. “With the 50, I look and what I see is what will be on the film.”   (Note: M-series Leicas then, as M’s are today, have a see-through optical viewfinder.  No EVF or prism through which to see).

Although the 1950s and 1960s offered him opportunities to work with shorter focal length lenses, he rarely did so.  He used 35mm lenses from time to time, usually out of necessity rather than preference.  Even then, he expressed his reservations.  “The wide-angle lens for me is a mannerism,” he said. “It’s not seeing; it’s an effect.”  Those brief detours never changed his practice.  He disliked how 35mm lenses stretched space and altered the geometry he relied on.  Telephoto lenses had even less appeal.  He felt they interfered with the intimacy that was essential to his work.  “A long lens separates you from the scene.  I want to be there, close, part of it.”   His preferences are much, much different than what we witness with today’s street photographers, who prefer much wider angled lenses than 50mm.

With an M3

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, as he transitioned from heavy Magnum assignments into more selective projects (he was in his 60s and 70s as well), his equipment remained nearly unchanged.  He carried Leica M3s, an M2 when he needed to use a 35mm frameline, and later the M4.  Through these years the 50mm Summicron—the rigid version, and later the more compact iterations—remained his mainstay.  Even when he stepped back from photojournalism in the mid-1970s and turned increasingly toward drawing (painting and drawing was seemingly his first love), he continued to photograph occasionally with the M4-P and then the M6.  Still, the lens he used was always a 50mm.  In one of his later interviews, he summed up a lifetime of visual discipline with the line, “For me, the 50 is the right distance. It is the lens that gives the least distortion, the one that feels the most natural.” 

In his last decades, when he photographed mostly family, gatherings, and the rare street scene, the 50mm remained his workhorse.  He had access to the entire modern Leica lineup—28mm, 35mm, fast f/1.4 lenses, and telephoto options—but he didn’t seem interested.  His vision had been formed early and never wavered.  He believed the 50mm preserved the integrity of the scene without calling attention to itself.  It kept him honest, kept his geometry clean, and allowed him to work instinctively without technological interference.  As he once put it, “The camera is an extension of the eye. Why would I want my eye to be distorted?”

Across six decades of photography, through wars, revolutions, portraits of the great thinkers of his time, and countless everyday moments, Cartier-Bresson built a legacy largely on the field of view of a single focal length.  (This is what I had always heard and what started me down this path to dig deeper to definitively find out.)  The 50mm was never just another focal length to him.   It was his way of seeing.

So, now I know.  He didn’t use 50mm lenses exclusively, but almost so.  I won’t repeat his reasons as he stated them clearly.  There is a part of me (the technical part of photography that I love along with the creative part) that would like to know which of his famous photographs were made with which focal lengths.  But, in reality, it doesn’t matter as I just admire his images, timing and vision for what it is without the distraction of technical specs.

Today, it seems to me from what I read and watch on YouTube, the trend is to use much wider lenses.  A 35mm lens (full frame field of view) is used as the 50mm once was.  Even the 28mm focal length is being used as the 50mm once was and is not considered very wide.  Some street and documentary photographers even use 24mm lenses for their photography.  I wonder what Cartier-Bresson would tell them if they asked him what he thought about their lenses?  I bet I know!

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Thanks for looking. Enjoy!

Dennis A. Mook

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