These four fashion photos are similar and probably the first is the best shot. But I have enclosed these four shots, all in a row, as they appear on the film to demonstrate the unlikely accuracy of photos taken using the Messraster focusing device.

Usually, especially back then in the early 60s, none of the photos would be of a quality of sharpness and definition of detail to satisfy the needs of fashion and advertising photos. The best pose would be chosen and then sent to the retouchers, who would blow it up large and essentially redraw almost all the details of the photo. It would then be reduced in size, re-photographed and used in the retouched version.

That never happened with me. As everyone can see, every photo is so precisely focused that all the detail is clear and nothing needs retouching. This is completely extraordinary and no one I know of ever achieved the same photo-quality straight from the camera. Modern top-of-the-line, super expensive auto-focusing digital cameras can achieve similar accuracy, but mostly by stopping down quite far, and thus losing the use of unsharpness in some areas as artistic possibilities. In these photos, the model and clothes stand out even more than expected, because other planes of the photo are not quite as sharp or actually unsharp.

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