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This photo, taken with an Astro Gesellschaft 2000mm F10 Telestan Lens, was focused with a special Messraster made for that focal length and aperture size.

This was the first time such a long tele lens was ever purposely focal-point-exactly focused, and probably the only time.

For a few years, this photo was probably the most famous photo of the city, because the Berliners had never seen exactly what the face of their monument looked like. It was published and exhibited in many places, and the photo was the main photo of the Berlin Pavilion at the New York City World's Fair, ca 1953-4. It was placed right in front of the entrance and was the first thing visitors saw as they entered the pavilion, along with an exhibit of the Messraster Focusing Device, which was the technological highlight of the pavilion. The precision of the focus on the eye can be seen in the "Plasticity", or impression of three-dimensionality on a two dimensional surface, around the eyelids and around the lips, which, due to the angle of the head, were on the same parallel plane to the camera as the eyelids.

© 2006 Mark Anstendig

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