Well Sidney Furie was gonna use Curtis Petersen as he has been in most his films for the last 20 years. Dolph chose Maxime Alexandre (who's Belgian and not French by the way), but I'm not sure if it's because he saw his work in HIGH TENSION or his reel based on a choise of DP's presented to him, especially since Alexandre was getting quite acustomed to shooting in Romania since Alexandre Arcady's ENTRE CHIENS ET LOUPS (Break of Dawn) and HIGH TENSION (and will do a few more movies over there after THE DEFENDER as well)...
I think his work was fantastic, on par with Ross Clarkson's on THE MECHANIK. Certainly made the film look at least twice as big.