Conrad L. Hall

Cinematographer Conrad L. Hall, a master artist of the camera who was nominated for nine Oscars and won two, died Saturday evening. He was 76.

Mr. Hall died at a Santa Monica hospital of complications from bladder cancer, said his wife, Susan Hall.

Mr. Hall was considered an expert in the use of light. He filmed nearly three dozen movies in a career that stretched 50 years. He won Academy Awards for 1969 ' s " Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid " and 1999 ' s " American Beauty. "

" Every film that he worked on was something beautiful to the eye, and very imaginative, " said producer Richard D. Zanuck, who was head of production at 20th Century Fox when Mr. Hall made " Butch Cassidy " and worked with him on last year ' s Irish-American mob tale, " Road to Perdition. "

" With ' Road to Perdition ' you could virtually take every frame of his work and blow it up and hang it over your fireplace, " Zanuck said. " It was like Rembrandt at work. Connie was not known for speed, but neither was Rembrandt. He was known for incredible genius. "

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

He shot in black and white and in color, evoking chilly realism in " In Cold Blood " and color-soaked surrealism in " American Beauty. "

He struggled at first with " American Beauty, " Sam Mendes ' dark, wildly absurd portrait of a dysfunctional family, Mr. Hall once told an interviewer.

" I kept asking Sam, ' How are we going to light these people? They ' re all so unlikable. ' . . . How do you light people like this? Our hero is a drug addict. Our mother is a materialist. But everybody deserves a little light, don ' t they? " he said.

The film ' s rich images, including hypnotic shots of cascading red rose petals, helped it win five Oscars, including best picture and best cinematography for Mr. Hall.

" Light was his friend and he could use as much or as little of it as he thought was fitting for the scene he was doing or the shot he was doing, " Zanuck said. " He was a master of subtlety. "

" Road to Perdition " was Mr. Hall ' s second collaboration with Mendes.

Mr. Hall ' s many honors included a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematography in 1994 and an outstanding achievement award from the cinematography society in 1988 for " Tequila Sunrise. " He served last year as Kodak cinematographer in residence at UCLA ' s School of Theater, Film and Television.

Mr. Hall was to be honored later this month with a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review, Susan Hall said.

Mr. Hall was born and raised in Tahiti. He was the son of James Norman Hall, co-author of the novels " Mutiny on the Bounty " and " The Hurricane. " He initially wanted to go into journalism, but after doing poorly in a creative writing class at the University of Southern California, he decided to look for a new major and began flipping through the course catalog, he told the Los Angeles Times last year.

" It started with A for astronomy, B for biology and C for cinema, " Mr. Hall said. " I thought ' Cinema? You mean like movies? Rubbing elbows with stars? Making all that money? ' For all the wrong reasons, I signed up, and then had a love affair with the visual language and learned to tell stories like my dad. "

He turned to cinematography after graduation, when he and two friends formed a production company and bought a short story to make into a feature. Since they couldn ' t all direct they put three pieces of paper labeled producer, director and cinematographer into a hat, and Mr. Hall drew cinematographer, he has said.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Hall broke into television, working on the rodeo series " Stoney Burke " and the sci-fi anthology series " The Outer Limits. " On two of his first films, " The Professionals " and " In Cold Blood, " he worked with director Richard Brooks, whom he considered a surrogate father.

Mr. Hall ' s son, Conrad W. Hall, followed him in the profession, most recently filming " Panic Room. "

In addition to his second wife, Susan, and his son, Mr. Hall is survived by two daughters, Kate Hall-Feist and Naia Hall-West, and a sister, Nancy Rutgers.