224 WITH SCOTT : THE SILVER LINING 



improved on a common error by putting three on one plate. 

 We had such a rush before starting our journey that neither 

 Debenham nor myself could test a single plate under Antarctic 

 conditions. It seems simple now, but we had many failures 

 before we gauged the best method. Previous Antarctickers 

 had recommended plates and not films. I now disagree with 

 this advice in toto y at any rate for sledging. We broke the 

 plates. They scratched easily. Changing them in our bags 

 was an unmitigated nuisance and filled the dark slides with 

 hairs. Lastly, the glass plates weighed so much that they 

 were always left behind when we had to cut down weights. 



We had an idea that the quickest exposures would be 

 advisable with snowscapes. Ultimately we took most of 

 them at half a second or thereabouts ! 



A typical scene would largely consist of a skyline of snow 

 mountain backed by a blue sky more or less covered by grey 

 or white clouds. The foreground was usually also snow with 

 bluish shadows. Everything was blue or white. There was 

 little contrast, and owing to the photographic value of blue 

 being almost the same as that of white^ the resulting photo- 

 graph was of a dismal flatness and one could not distinguish 

 land from sky. 



Of course this pointed to yellow screens to cut out all blue 

 and give it the effect of black. We had much better success 

 thereafter, but this necessitated the slow exposures I have 

 mentioned previously. 



My chief camera was a Zeiss Minimum Palmos equipped 

 with all modern features, taking telephoto pictures, stereo- 

 scopic, \ plate or panorams (7^ inches long). It had a focal 

 plane shutter calculated to give ysVo of a second ; but the 

 rubber shutter froze stiff, and my exposures were largely made 

 with a red handkerchief presented to me by Wright. 



At the east end of the hut Ponting was busy at a huge 

 instrument which looked like a cross between a barrel organ 

 and a butter churn. It was really a " washer ' for cinema 

 films. The films were wound on a cylinder, placed in the 

 washer, covered with a lid, and then rotated by a handle. 

 When this operation was finished we all admired Ponting's 

 ingenuity, for he emptied out the water and placing a rug inside 

 the hybrid, converted it into a most comfortable lounge chair. 



The 23rd was Sunday, and Scott held Church service as 



