machine-gun fire, in "The Hill," the exposure was far from normal. In this sequence, due to almost blinding rain and its being late afternoon, the exposure was 1/100 sec, at F2.2. The sequence of Corporal Leonard Hayworth, also in "The Hill," was taken at 1/100 sec. with the F1.5 lens wide open. The exposure for the photograph of the men marching past their fallen, ambushed comrades, in "Retreat, Hell," was 1/100 sec. at F1.4, for it was late afternoon, wintertime, and nearly dark. All of the photographs in "The Hill" and "The City" were taken with the Nikkor 50mm, F1.5 lens. All of the photographs in "Retreat, Hell!" were taken with the Nikkor 50mm, F1.4 lens…that is all but one, and it, the portrait of the Chinese Communist soldier which opens the story, was taken with the Nikkor 135mm, F3.5 lens. Every photograph used in making this book was printed by Daniel Becker, of Life's darkroom staff. The original prints were all enlarged to 14" x 20", for the double-page plates, and to 10" x 14" for the vertical full-page plates. From these originals the publishers reduced the photographs to the sizes reproduced in the book. The set of prints by Dan Becker were, in the opinion of Mr. Dan Bradley, in charge of production at Harper & Brothers, and all the Life photographers and staff who saw them, the finest set of matched 35mm enlargements they had ever seen. I agree. And that is the main reason why, when Bourke-White and Mydans and Walker and Eyerman and Eisenstaedt and Kessel and all the rest of us at Life send in our films from the field, undeveloped—that is why we don't worry once we know that the film package has been received. Dan Becker and his colleagues in the darkroom always handle those films as though they had taken them themselves . . . and sometimes they come up with prints of things that even we, who took the pictures, did not know were on the negatives. To have men in New York developing and printing films taken thousands of miles away may sound rather strange, and perhaps photographically dangerous, to many of you who do your own processing, but the Life labmen have grown 176 l Ⅶ. Photo Data This is War!
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