Nayak in 1966.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Mitra conducted regular workshops at the Film and Television Institute in India. Just like Ritwik Ghatak had fired the minds of direction students in a previous generation, Mitra laid open the secrets of the camera for a new breed of technicians. They included Virendra Saini, Anil Mehta, KU Mohanan, Dilip Varma, Sunny Joseph and Anoop Jotwani, who would go on to become eminent cinematographers in their own right.
“He was like an Impressionist painter who would concentrate on different tones on the face,” Virendra Saini said. “The background was as important as the foreground.”