On Mount Everest: Need Help

[cowanw]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45932657
See seventh Paragraph

Mallory Posting to LFPF via cell phone: Help I am on Mount Everest and all my Ilford Special Rapid Plates are coming out severely underexposed and backwards. Is any body else Having trouble with Ilford Plates. any help is appreciated as we are pushing on up soon.

Member 1: You should be using Kodak Dry Plates, much better consistency and the images are never reversed.

Member two: What developer are you using?

Mallory: ID-11

Member two: You should be using pyrogallol-ammonia.

Member three: If you use Rodinol you can achieve 10 line pairs of visual information.

Mallory: Look I am on the mountain and all I have are Ilford Plates and ID-11. The nearest store is Kathmandu and it carries AGFA.

Member four: You are exposing incorrectly. Are you using the Bee actinometer. I suggest decrease exposure by 2 F-stops. When you are photographing snow you need to close down you know.

Mallory: I know, but how is that helping my underexposed plates.
- and so on until two days later

Pat Gainer posts: try turning the plates over, so the smooth side faces away from the lens.


Mallory: Thanks Pictures are better

183623

-Apparently Mallory even tried pre flashing!

[consummate_fritterer]

...

[Drew Wiley]

They did in fact find Mallory's actual camera melting out of the glacier, and at least tried to develop the film still inside, unrealistic as that was. So nobody will ever know if he actually reached the top first, and died on the way back down, or if a certain point on the ridge was as high as he ever got.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I read all the articles, very intriguing. Worth the read.

[pgk]

They did in fact find Mallory's actual camera melting out of the glacier, and at least tried to develop the film still inside, unrealistic as that was. So nobody will ever know if he actually reached the top first, and died on the way back down, or if a certain point on the ridge was as high as he ever got.

As far as I'm aware the camera has not as yet been found. Whether the latent image still exists on the film (in the cold conditions its regression might well be slowed but even so its a long time) is an interesting point. I would not want to be responsible for trying to find out and produce images from it though. Whoever does (if that is, they ever find the camera intact with film still inside) might well be making a few phone calls about it though.

[John Layton]

I find it...the idea that Mallory might have actually made the summit - absolutely amazing and still somewhat unbelievable, given the (non photographic) equipment technology available in his day. But...would it be good to find (and process) the film so that Mallory's "success" might be verified...or is this better left as a mystery?

[pgk]

The equipment Mallory and Irving was entirely unsuitable by today's standards for anyone attempting the summit. But then it was also entirely unsuitable for the height at which they found Mallory's body, so who knows? I'm intrigued, but a large part of me thinks that its best left as a mystery. Having read books by people like Frank Smythe who took mountain photographs in the 1930s and describes taking them as often being extremely cold work, I do wonder how anyone could have managed a camera on the summit of Everest wearing what they were.

[cowanw]

For the record, they are looking for a Kodak Vest Pocket camera. Also on the expedition were a 7.5x5 Hare plate camera with a Dallmeyer 9 inch lens and a telephoto attachment and a set of Wratten filters; two quarter plate cameras for glass negatives, Sinclair Una's with a 5.3 inch Dallmeyer lens and an Adon telephoto.
The plates were Imperial Special Rapid and fine Grain slow. They also had a Panoram Kodak which used 12x4 inch film negatives; a No.1 Autograph with Cooke lenses