Steve McCurry is probably one of the best-known living photographers – famous for his National Geographic shoots and that mesmerizing shot of the Afghan Girl, which he shot in 1984 on Kodachrome using a Nikon FM2 with a Nikkor 105mm lens.
Aged 76, McCurry is still very actively shooting new images today. And when I bumped into him at the recent Leica SL3-P launch in Germany, I was amazed to find out that the legendary Magnum photographer almost always uses just one lens today: a Leica Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-90mm f/2.8-4 Asph zoom.
"I do about 95% of all my shooting with that one lens, whether it's corporate, advertising or personal work", he explains.
In fact, he hasn't just gone down to using this one fast standard zoom; he has also stripped down his whole camera kit.
"In the really old days, I used to have a camera bag with all my stuff," he recalls. "Then I went from that to a photo vest with two cameras, both with fixed lenses, lots of film and maybe a third lens.
"My system now is a 24-90mm lens, one body, a few cards and a couple of batteries. I have no bag, nothing – just cards and batteries in a pocket."
McCurry switched from Nikon with the launch of the Leica SL2 back in 2019 – but it wasn't a move that he made on a whim, or simply because Leica was keen to have him on board.
"I did a very careful analysis," he explained. "I took my Nikon, I took the Leica, and I shot test pictures in the studio and went on the street. I took some of my assistants out. We did some portraits. We did kind of a chart, and we did this over some days.
"It became evident that the Leica lenses were crisper, sharper, had better resolution. It just became obvious that that was a direction that I should go in, after all that careful analysis.
"What really matters is the print. I print every day in my Pennsylvania studio. Every day we're printing for books, for exhibitions, so printing is really an important thing. I need a lens that's really going to make pictures that result in great prints, and that's what I'm achieving with this SL series.
"I look at a lot of my pictures from before Leica and after Leica, and I'm noticing that with the Leica SL series, I could make much bigger prints for exhibitions than I ever could with film or with the Nikon".
Despite his former love for Kodachrome, McCurry doesn't chase after the old color slide film look with his digital cameras.
"When I work with my retoucher, I'm just trying to get the picture to look like what I saw when I was shooting. I'm never trying to achieve a Kodachrome look or a film look," he explains.
"I'm just trying to get it right and capture something that feels genuine. It's not really about the color; it's more about the emotion, the storytelling aspect of the picture. So for me, yeah, I love good, rich color – but it has to support the story".
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