What are/were The Great Masters using?

[Michael Nagl]

Dear Colleagues,

I think it would make it easier for everyone who has a hard time deciding which camera to get if they knew what The Great Masters were using. Let´s make a list!
Here are a few names to start with:
Jeff Wall - Linhof Bi-Kardan
Sally Mann - Toyo 810M
Hiroshi Sugimoto - Phillips (but that´s just hearsay)
Kyogi Takahashi - Deardorff
Jock Sturges - Kodak Master View
Richard Misrach - Deardorff

It would also be of great interest to learn about the lenses/focal lenghts they preferred. Please contribute your knowledge!
Thanks
Michael

[Armin Seeholzer]

Richard Avedon Sinar P and Deardorff, so if you would like to take pictures like Avedon just buy this two cameras and you are the man;--))))))
What I recomend buy the camera which fits your hands and your needs best, everything else is just hunting for the magic bullet!

Cheers Armin

[catshaver]

Brett Weston liked the Calumet C1 and the Rollei SL66. Walker Evans liked a Kodak Pocket folder. Edward Weston loved his Century Universal. Imogen Cunningham and Irving Penn liked their Rolleiflexes. These guys could make great shots with a cardboard box and a pinhole, I reckon. It's the vision behind the camera that makes the master.

[MIke Sherck]

I think that we all understand by now that just having the stuff doesn't mean we can photograph like <insert name here>.

But a lot of us are gearheads; photography in general seems to draw this sort. It's fun to think that <famous photographer> made <famous photograph> with <equipment>. It's like telling blond jokes: we don't mean anything by it. So I say, go ahead and have fun.

Edward Weston made any number of wonderful photographs with what looked a lot to me like a Kodak D2, which he used forever, then gave it to one of his sons (Brett?) and bought the Century with the ill-fitting back (recalling from his Daybooks.) St. Ansel seemed to have a different camera for practically every photograph he took; he must have been a gearhead of modern proportions. I think it is interesting that we know more about their cameras than we do their lenses. I wonder if they thought the cameras weren't important so they could be talked about, but the lenses were important, maybe along the lines of not wanting rivals to know, so they didn't talk about them? Dunno, but you'd think that with all the modern emphasis on lenses and de-emphasis on camera brand, we'd know more about their lenses than we seem to.

Mike

[Frank Petronio]

I have a late photo of Ansel using a old-style 4x5 Arca-Swiss, apparently he drank the Kool-Aid first.

His technical books often mention his equipment in the photo captions.

There are photos of Avedon with a Sinar Norma, perhaps he got the P later. I bet he only used the Deardorff occasionally for its effect on the sitter. I also read he liked a 360mm Symmar and Fuji lens of the same length.

[Michael Nagl]

Burtynsky - 4x5 Technika

[Bill_1856]

Dear Colleagues,

I think it would make it easier for everyone who has a hard time deciding which camera to get if they knew what The Great Masters were using.

Michael, mostly I use a 4x5 Crown Graphic with a 162mm Wollensak Raptar lens.

[Richard K.]

Burtynsky - 4x5 Technika

He worked for years with a Phillips 8x10 also...

[William McEwen]

Sturges -- is he still using the Master View? Seems to me he sold it a few years ago.

Stieglitz -- 8x10 Kodak 2D.

[Oren Grad]

By all accounts Nick Nixon is a serial monogamist - he keeps changing his camera. By now he must have used every 8x10 field camera under the sun, plus a few 11x14's to boot.