Slightly Out of Focus

''Slightly Out of Focus'' is the legendary 1947 World War II memoir and written by the famous Hungarian photojournalist Robert Capa. The book provides a gripping, witty, and deeply moving firsthand account of his frontline experiences covering the European theater between 1942 and 1945. The phrase "slightly out of focus" originates from a notorious darkroom accident. On D-Day (June 6, 1944), Capa landed with the first wave of American troops at Omaha Beach. He risked his life to shoot roughly 106 images. When the film arrived at the Life magazine darkroom in London, a panicked lab assistant used too much heat while drying the negatives, melting the emulsion and destroying most of the frames. When Life published the surviving shot, they famously captioned it as being "slightly out of focus" due to shaking hands from the intensity of combat. Capa, knowing the blur was actually caused by the lab error, adopted the phrase as a self-deprecating badge of honor and the title for his autobiography.