SPANISH
General René Cogny, commander in chief of the French forces in the área of Tonkin (North Vietnam), was photographed by Robert Capa inside the Morane-Saulnier MS-500 liaison aircraft (in which was also the correspondent for Life magazine John Mecklin) during the trip from Hanoi to Nam Dinh on May 24, 1954.
© Robert Capa / ICP New York
This highly meaningful picture reveals faithfully the definition of struggling photographer applied by Dirck Halstead to the great war photographer, because Capa masterfully captures the French general being thoughtful and worried.
René Cogny knows
that the war is lost and that the life of thousands of men depends on his
decisions, because he has had to simultaneously tackle two fronts after the
route of transport between Hanoi and Haiphong has been greatly disrupted by
Nguyen Giap by sending the Viet Minh 320th Division, complemented by
14 regional battalions and three autonomous regiments, attacking at the same
time the French outposts located in the rural zones between Phu Ly, Nam Dinh,
Thai Binh and Thanh Ne.
Once more,
Capa´s ability, sensitivity and nose to perceive and photograph the most
representative moments, with an exceedingly accurate timing when pressing the
shutter release button of his camera, stands out.
On the other
hand, this image isn´t only the result of the photographic act during the
exposure of the Kodak Super-XX High Speed Panchromatic black and white film but
stems from a previous exhaustive work of observation of the character, his
movements and reactions inside the plane by Capa, from the very moment of the
aircraft took off at Hanoi Gia Lam airport, approximately half an hour
before.
In addition,
this very interesting picture is likewise relevant since it shows the perfect
synergy for handheld shots between:
a) The Contax IIa rangefinder camera
from 1950 (manufactured by Zeiss Ikon A.G.Stuttgart, improving the
already masterpiece of optical and mechanical engineering Contax II from 1936
created by Zeiss engineer Hubert Nerwin - first model featuring combined
rangefinder and viewfinder in a single window- ) in which the shutter was
redesigned and greatly improved, replacing the connecting cloth of the curtains
by geartrains, as well as reducing the number of components and the rangefinder
baselength from 90 mm to 73 mm (with a 0.66x magnification and an affective
base length of 48 mm), which enabled a more comfortable grabbing of the camera.
b) The Carl Zeiss
Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/2 with one layer T antireflection coating. Such T coating,
patented by Alexander Smakula in November 1935, rendered brilliant and high
contrast images and was the fruit of twelve years of research by Carl Zeiss
Jena from the study of the 1923 prototype CZJ 8,5 cm f/1.75 aimed at improving
the quality of the lenses coating the surface of the optical elements with very
thin layers of special materials which bettered the light transmission.
c) A highly
experienced photojournalist who fights to his utmost with his 35 mm rangefinder
camera within the very tight space of the aircraft to get the picture, since
under normal circumstances this kind of plane can only transport the pilot and
one passenger, so Capa and Mecklin (whom Donald M. Winslow has given his seat,
because there wasn´t enough room for a third journalist) are exceedingly
crammed behind the general, in such a way that Capa can barely move.
And though
getting a high technical quality is not the priority in this sort of
photojournalistic pictures, it´s really amazing the resolving power delivered (watch
for instance the excellent detail in the general´s nose and the extinguisher)
by the lens designed by the genius Ludwig Bertele twenty-two years before, for
the picture is made within a very short distance, probably at f/5.6 and from a
position very near the minimum focusing distance.
It speaks
volumes of the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/2 T used by Capa and designed by
Ludwig Bertele in 1932 in an utterly handcrafted way, using a lot of thousands
of hours of manual tracing of light rays throughout the creation stages,
without any help of computers or electronic calculators, only taking advantage
of his impressive knowledge on optics, physics, mathematics and available
optical glasses of the time, as well as making an extensive use of tables of
logarithms, two years before Konrad Zuse started in 1934 the conceptual genesis
of digital computers, which brought about two years later the Z1 (featuring
sixty-four words, each one containing 22 bits) and the Z2 from 1938, which used
800 transmitters, managing to create in 1941 the Z3, first wholly operative
digital computer in the world, and in 1946 the Z4, the most sophisticated of
his digital computers (including the revolutionary Plankalkül software based on
arithmetic logics and the application of pure states on doing the numerical
calculi) that was the embryo of the 1951 Zuse Z5, first computer used by Leica
to help in the design of its lenses and sporting plenty of electromechanical
relays, making possible to attain a seventy times faster designing speed of
high luminosity and top-notch quality photographic lenses than with manual
calculi, thanks to the acceleration with floating coma calculum, which made
possible to a great extent the automatization of improvements in optical
designs, the increase in production capacity with new optical glasses and a
far superior manufacturing quickness, which resulted in the launching into photographic market by Leica of the 7 element in 6 groups collapsible Summicron 50 mm f/2 Version 1 in 1953, the first one including the remarkable LaK9 rare earth glass.
And this was a
turning point in the history of photographic lenses, because both the
Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 First Version from 1959 and the Summicron-M 50 mm f/2
Version 2 (1956-1968), available in rigid mount and dual range (sharing
identical optical design and reformulated with respect to the previous retractable
Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Version 1 1953-1960, increasing its resolving power and
contrast, as well as bettering image quality at the nearest focusing
distances) were feasible thanks to the synergy between the tremendous
knowledge possessed by the Leitz optical designers and mechanics and the use of
the Zuse Z5 computer installed in Wetzlar since 1952.
Ludwig Bertele,
one of the greatest designers of photographic lenses ever. Among his abundant
achievements highlight the legendary Ernostar f/2 lens from 1923 (for the 6 x
4.5 cm medium format Ernemann Ermanox, which allowed the dawn of the agile and
dynamic indoor photojournalism with available light embodied by the towering
figure of Erich Salomon), the birth in 1931 of the Sonnar scheme (derived from
the 1924 Ernostar Type 2 but featuring a lesser quantity of optical groups,
managing to greatly reduce the light scattering as well as generating a
superior contrast) that made possible the creation of the not less mythical
Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/1.5 from 1932 and Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/2
from 1932, without forgetting the Carl Zeiss Jena Biogon 3,5 cm f/2.8 from
1935, the Sonnar 180 mm f/2.8 from 1935 and others, which were followed after
the Second World War by extraordinary photogrammetric wideangle lenses as the
large format Aviogon from 1950 sporting a 90º coverage, the large format Super
Aviogon from 1956 providing a 120º coverage, the Biogon 38 mm f/4.5 medium
format 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ for Hasselblad cameras and many others.
It all proves
clearly that the design by Ludwig Bertele of both the Carl Zeiss
Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/2 featuring 6 elements in 3 groups (used by Capa to get the
picture of general Cogny inside the plane) and the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5 cm
f/1.5 sporting 7 elements in 3 groups make up one of the greatest feats in the History of Optics, since they were created with 100% manual designing and
building parameters, without any help of computers or software whatsoever, with
no aspherical surfaces and an strenuous stint of three years, started in 1929
and finished in 1932, nothing less than eighty-one years ago.
As a matter of
fact, both lenses are excellent even to the very exacting current standards of
quality, already in XXI Century, in which there are tons of objectives whose
optical formula includes aspherical elements and there are available very powerful
computers boasting highly sophisticated software programs, albeit when tackling
the designing of ultraluminous class reference lenses in different focal
lengths the key factor goes on being the personal touches provided by the best
optical designers based on their expertise.
It´s therefore
not surprising the unquestionable fact that throughout nothing less than
twenty-two years, between 1932 and 1954, the highly luminous lenses for 24 x 36
mm format photographic cameras made by Carl Zeiss (which had top class
designers like Carl Paul Goerz, Willy Merté, Robert Richter, Sylvester
Hubert, Ludwig Bertele himself and others) were by far the qualitative world
benchmarks (above all the extraordinary for the time Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5
cm f/1.5 from 1932 and the excellent Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/2 from 1932 , Carl Zeiss Jena
Tessar 50 mm f/2.8 from 1932 and Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 85 mm f/2 – both in its
version of 6 elements in 3 groups previous to the Second World War and in the
one featuring 7 elements in 3 groups launched into market in 1951-, without
forgetting the Biogon 35 mm f/2.8 from 1937 featuring 5 elements in 3 groups
and the Topogon 25 mm f/4 from 1950 including 4 elements in 4 groups), to such
an extent that among all the lenses manufactured by Leica between mid twenties
and 1954, only the Leitz Elmar 5 cm f/3.5 designed by Max Berek could challenge
Carl Zeiss standard objectives, although with much lesser luminosity.
The picture made
by Capa to General Cogny inside the Morane-Saulnier MS-500 liaison aircraft corresponds
to a tipping point year in the optical and mechanical evolution of 50 mm
ultraluminous lenses, which have been and keep on being the quality yardstick
of each brand, and is a good example of the formidable symbiosis between a 35 mm
rangefinder camera built without any qualitative compromises and a rather
experienced war photographer like Capa to carry out the mission for which they
were created: the capturing of great images, even under the most extreme
conditions.
In this regard,
though there was a lot of available light inside the cabin of the aircraft
thanks to its transparent cockpit design optimized for reconnaissance tasks,
which enabled to stop down in the range f/5.6-f/11 without any problem,
circumstances for Capa weren´t favourable on trying to get this picture: he
had to work very near the minimum focusing distance of the camera, he had
barely any space to move his arms, because he was behind general Cogny, very cramped
next to John Mecklin, and the slight rattling generated by the 240 h.p Argus As
10 inverted V-8 air-cooled 90º piston engine of the STOL Morane-Saulnier MS-500
Criquet liaison plane (which is essentially a Fieseler FI 156 Storch with
aluminum wings) generated risk of blurred picture because of lack of precise
focus or camera shaking while the shutter was open, but the very wide 73 mm rangefinder
baselength of the Contax IIa enabling a very accurate focusing, the non
existence of a swivelling up and down mirror, the balance of masses of the
camera body and above all the fight and experience of the photographer striving
after getting the image, overcome the difficulties.
Needless to say that Capa would have made the photograph even if he had only had a Kodak Brownie 1900 with meniscus, because he was born to
© José Manuel Serrano Esparza
