Marc, I believe the camera used by Hillary in the 1953 climb was a Kodak Retina, a 35mm folder, with a Xenar lens. An oldie (at the time) but a goodie. John From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 8:25 PM Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Rollei 35S and the Sonnar 2.8/40 At 04:11 PM 11/20/2013, Don Williams wrote: > I wish I had bought one when I could have. Too late now. > > I once met > > David Breashears who topped Everest twice, once making the famous Imax film > on the climb where so many folks died. > I have never met David though I did correspond with him following the '98 climb which discovered Mallory's body. My son met him a year or two later at a book-signing in Alaska. The Rollei 35 was the expedition camera on the '73 US climb on Everest and went high. The Prewar expeditions used Kodak VP's for high work, all of which seem to have been equipped with Bausch & Lomb Tessars. The successful '53 climb used Contax II and III cameras donated by TIME-LIFE when they upgraded to the Postwar IIa and IIIa cameras. And the very improper Sayres climb of the North Face in '62 was documented with a Contax IIa. There is no hard evidence that Leica ever made an appearance on Everest until the '84 Canadian climb but, Lord Almighty!, the gnomes of Wetzlar and Solms have used it extensively in their advertising ever since. It is rumored, without any proof, that Frank Smythe had a Leica II with him on the '36 British climb but the only person to have ever claimed to have seen the camera at Camp IV or above was Tenzing Norgay. A few Rolleiflex TLR's were carried on the '36 and '38 climbs but none of these seem to have made it above Camp III at the base of the North Col. One of the climbers selected for the aborted 1939 climb had argued with some force to have the Automat adopted as the expedition camera for that climb. So, yes, a Rollei 35 was at the summit a decade and more before the first Leica made it up. <he grins> Marc msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list