Kodak vest pocket model B

[Mike Kennedy]

I just found one at a yard sale and picked it up for $5.00
After doing a bit of investigation I found out that the ill-fated Mallory/Irvine Mt.Everest expedition of 1924 carried such a camera. More web surfing revealed that Mallory's body was found in the 1990's but the camera remains lost. Or has it?
Do any members have information about the lost Everest film? I would love to explore the mystery further.

Thanks All,
Mike Kennedy

 

[Donald Qualls]

I haven't heard any more updates on finding Mallory's camera, and I'm sure it would have made headlines because of the possibility the film contains evidence Mallory beat Hillary to the peak. The party that found his body searched the area, but once they left the mountain, the likelihood of that camera turning up dropped to nearly nil -- first, because though there are many people up and down Everest any given year, few of them can spare energy or supplies for anything other than the climb (and they're there to summit the mountain, not to search for a tiny black box in a talus field of rocks fifty times its size), and second because, with the removal of the body, the best reference for the most likely place to look is gone.

Perhaps in another century or two, Star Trek level technology will permit finding the camera -- and even recovering images from the film, if anyone even remembers what film photography was in the 22nd or 23rd century...

 

[Mike Kennedy]

Thanks for the update Donald.

When I initally read the article on Mallory's camera it really peaked my interest in trying out my "yard sale" find. Fortunately a fellow member, Clarence Rhymer, was able to supply some 127 film.

JMK

 

[rbarker]

If the camera is ever recovered, it might add an interesting chapter to the latent image degradation debate. After all, the film has been frozen all these years.

 

[Donald Qualls]

If the camera is ever recovered, it might add an interesting chapter to the latent image degradation debate. After all, the film has been frozen all these years.

Well, no, it probably hasn't. Even above 25,000 feet elevation, on the south slope of the mountain there's considerable melting and refreezing of snow each summer, forming a crust (I've read of this crust all the way to the peak in various reports) even where the snow doesn't simply sublimate off or melt and run off. Rocks in direct sun (which is significantly stronger at that height than at sea level) can become quite warm. Given the camera was originally dark brown or black, it has probably been through several hundred freeze-thaw cycles, in conditions ranging from dry to damp to potentially flooded, if it's been in locations where the sun could reach it.

Recovering any image from film so mistreated would be almost miraculous -- film recovered from the Arctic a few years ago would have been far less abused, as it would have been in conditions that virtually guaranteed continuous sub-freezing temperatures and thus neither temperature cycling nor intrusion of liquid water.