The Magnificent Eleven

Capa stated that while under fire, he took 106 pictures, all but eleven of which were destroyed in a processing accident in the Life magazine photo lab in London, although the accidental loss of the remaining negatives has been disputed.

He used two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film, and returned to the United Kingdom within hours in order to meet a publication deadline for Life magazine's next issue.

Life magazine printed five of the pictures in its June 19, 1944, issue, "Beachheads of Normandy: The Fateful Battle for Europe is Joined by Sea and Air.

"[1] Some of the images had captions that described the footage as "slightly out of focus", explaining that Capa's hands were shaking in the excitement of the moment.

The captions were written by magazine staffers, as Capa did not provide Life with notes or a verbal description of what they showed.

[7] Historian and critic A. D. Coleman has suggested that this famous and widely disseminated story is implausible, because (among other things) the temperatures used by such driers would not have been hot enough to melt or set fire to film.