Southwest Face of Everest - camera?

My apologies for coming to the party a bit late but I’ve only just read this thread.

I posted the following some years ago but it answers nickthetasmaniac’s original query and others might find it interesting.

I remember attending a public lecture and slide show in 1977 in Exeter UK of the photographs taken on the 1975 Everest South West Face expedition. It was presented by Doug Scott, one of the expedition photographers, who with Dougal Haston was the first to reach the summit on that expedition, followed a day or so later by Pertemba and Pete Boardman. Sadly, Mick Burke died in a fall, after, it was believed, he had reached the summit. Chris Bonington was the expedition leader.

Doug very modestly introduced the talk by saying that if the audience felt that any of the photographs had some aesthetic and photographic quality - in fact they were all superb - they should remember that the audience was only seeing a very small selection of the 20,000 or so frames that had actually been taken, implying that the rest weren’t to the same standard!

He mentioned the winterised Olympus OM1 cameras that had been donated by Olympus, who were eager to get publicity for their new camera and system introduced in 1973, and said that the cameras performed flawlessly. He said that, of course, they had to develop a suitable metering method that would be accurate enough for the conditions and the fact that they were using colour slide film (Kodachrome 25) with far less latitude for exposure error. They tried various methods, he said, but the one that worked best when on the face and outside their bivouacs was the simplest - to take an incident reading and close one stop to get some texture in the snow. He pointed out that the incident reading by itself would make white white and that the one stop adjustment added to the reading proved just right in their situation and for the colour reversal film they were using.

The exhibition prints that were made to accompany the public tour - and for other exhibitions at the time - were Cibachrome. They were superb. I can vividly remember the summit prints, taken in fading daylight, where Scott and Haston took photos of each other.
 
Hi all, today I found a lovely second hand hardback copy of Everest the Hard Way. So, to elaborate on Anthony's answer above - it was indeed the Olympus OM1.

Apparently Olympus provided 20 winterised OM1's for the expedition. They didn't quite work 'flawlessly', but seemed to work pretty well. Doug Scott mentions in the book that the only faults were a couple of failed light meters, one jammed shutter, and three ISO/ASA discs falling off.

All of the OM1's were issued with the Zuiko 75-50mm zoom, and the expeditioners had the option of any other lens depending preference. Most took either a 28mm or 35mm. The expedition also had a range of other Zuikos along, including the 600mm.

They were also sponsored by Kodak and had a huge amount of film for the trip. 600 rolls of Kodachrome 25, 100 of High Speed Ektachrome, 100 of TriX, 200 of Panatomic X and 100 of Ektachrome X. Scott mentions that the Kodachrome 25 was fantastic but they didn't get great results with the High Speed Ektachrome.

Interestingly, due to the sponsorship deal with Olympus the expeditioners weren't supposed to use personal gear, but a few managed to anyway. Scott himself carried a Pentax 6x7 with 55mm, 105mm and 400mm lenses (and claimed the size/weight discouraged him from using it). He also mentioned that several climbers used Rollei 35's for the summit.
 
Lugging a Pentax 6x7 outfit up Everest (and the 400mm lens too??) seems crazy to me. A Rollei 35 makes much more sense!
 
KoNickon said:
Lugging a Pentax 6x7 outfit up Everest (and the 400mm lens too??) seems crazy to me. A Rollei 35 makes much more sense!
Click to expand...

I would imagine that the 6x7 was only used during the approach. Scott does mention that all photography became far less common the higher they went. I don’t think the 6x7 would have spent much, if any, time on the actual face.
 
nickthetasmaniac said:
I would imagine that the 6x7 was only used during the approach. Scott does mention that all photography became far less common the higher they went. I don’t think the 6x7 would have spent much, if any, time on the actual face.
Click to expand...

I suspect as well, that the 6x7 never made it past Base Camp.
 
George Lowe certainly took a Retina II (exact model I can't recall, but much newer than Hillary's 2nd-hand one) high on Everest in 1953 as the expedition photographer. There was a Rolleiflex as well that I suspect stayed lower down.

Hillary always claimed that the reason there was no photo of him at the summit was that Tenzing had never used a camera before and "now wasn't the time to teach him". I can see that.
 
I think Chris Boninton had an agreement with Olympus at one time but I recall reading in a piece by him that Rollei 35's were used when summiting on Everest.
 
My friend Pat Morrow was using Pentax back in the day & I'm pretty sure his Pentax MX made it to the summit on the Canadian Everest Expedition in '82.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom