Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/11/23

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Subject: Re: Cameras on Everest
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 01:15:54 -0500

At 06:35 PM 11/23/97 +0500, Ian Stanley wrote:
>	I just finished watching a fascinating film called The Conquest of Everest
>- The story of Edmund Hillary's conquest of Mount Everest.  I still don't
>understand why people climb mountains but there was some great footage of
>Nepal in 1953.  In a lot of ways the place hasn't really changed all that
>much.  There was quite a collection of cameras hanging around the necks of
>the various individuals involved in climb.  Marc can you help me out?  Do
>you know what cameras the team were using?

Folks, I DIDN'T set this one up!

See:

Small, Marc James.  "Zeiss on Everest".  Zeiss Historica Journal 15:2
(Autumn, 1993), 	pp. 9 - 10.

The expedition cameras were Contax II's and III's donated by Time/Life.
Hillary had a Prewar Retina (with a Zeiss lens, a rarity!), a camera later
stolen from him at an airport.  Many of the later expeditions used Rollei
35's as summit cameras -- these, of course, had Zeiss optics.

The early expeditions all had Zeiss or Zeiss-derived glass.  Leica didn't
get onto Everest, to my knowledge, until the '63 American trip, when
Dyrenfurth had an LTM camera with him.

Marc


msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!