At the age of 21, Mitra, who never had operated a motion picture camera, began his career as a cinematographer with Satyajit Ray, the legendary Indian film maker, for Pather Panchali (1955).
The fear of monsoon rain had forced the art director, Bansi Chandragupta, to abandon the original plan to build the inner courtyard of a typical Benares house in the open and the set was built inside a studio in Calcutta.
Mitra placed a framed painter white cloth over the set resembling a patch of sky and arranged studio lights below to bounce off the fake sky.His director Satyajit Ray also stated:[2] You know, about seven or eight years after Pather Panchali was made, I read an article in American Cinematographer written by Sven Nykvist — at the time of Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly, I think — claiming the invention of bounced light.
But we had been using it since 1954.Both Satyajit Ray and Subrata Mitra were greatly influenced by the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, in particular his use of natural light.
"[citation needed] From 1997 until his death, Mitra was an emeritus professor of cinematography at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) at Kolkata.