"For this reason he almost always used Kodak Tri-X (400ASA) film. Almost every half hour I passed him a cassette of fresh film and made notes for the exposed cassette which he had just handed to me."
I have the 2006 paperback " Henri Cartier-Bresson the man the image & the world - a retrospective" pp 431. At the back is a postscript by HCB thanking those involved in its production.
It notes:" Contrary to the impression that Cartier Bresson wandered the streets of the world discovering his photographs through a serendipitious conjunction of intuition and luck, the evidence at Magnum Photos shows that he researched, planned and positioned himself to take advantage of major eventa, and then worked extremely hard to photograph them with great thoroughness"
I daresay he would have been careful in his choice of film therefore.
It is not mentioned in the book as far as I can see,
It notes:" Contrary to the impression that Cartier Bresson wandered the streets of the world discovering his photographs through a serendipitious conjunction of intuition and luck, the evidence at Magnum Photos shows that he researched, planned and positioned himself to take advantage of major eventa, and then worked extremely hard to photograph them with great thoroughness"
From what I recall, a number of his contact sheets show him steadily working out a number of his iconic images across several frames - finding a background/ setting, then waiting for people/ events to arrive at compositional points in the frame. Not unlike a film director doing multiple takes to get the one perfect shot.
A great read and thanks for sharing.
One thing that stood out to me was how nice HCB was. He took time to introduce his assistant to some of his important subjects, treating him with respect (not master / servant).