'Butch Cassidy' cinematographer dies

The American cinematographer Conrad L Hall, whose work included the classic Sixties film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, has died. He had been in hospital at Santa Monica, California, with bladder cancer, his wife, Susan, said.

Hall, who was 76, was an expert in the use of light and worked on more than 30 films in a career that lasted 50 years. He was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning two, for Butch Cassidy (1969) and American Beauty (1999).

Sam Mendes, the British director of American Beauty, worked with Hall again on Road to Perdition last year. The producer, Richard Zanuck, who was head of production at Twentieth Century Fox when Hall made Butch Cassidy, said: "With Road to Perdition you could virtually take any frame of his work and blow it up and hang it over your fireplace. It was like Rembrandt at work."

Hall's other films included The Professionals (1966), In Cold Blood (1967), The Day of the Locust (1975), Tequila Sunrise (1988) and Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993).

His honours included a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematography and an outstanding achievement award for Tequila Sunrise. Last year, he was Kodak cinematographer in residence at the University of California's School of Theatre, Film and Television.