CAMERA NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1046, 4 January 1913, Page 4

CAMERA NOTES.

[By “Focus,”]

Although Captain Scott has not yet returned from his journey to the Polar region, the photographer to the British Antarctic expedition has returned some time since, his reason for preceding the return of Captain Scott himself being that the photographic apparatus could not be accommodated on the last stage of the Polar journey, when every consideration had to give place to food transport. Mr H. G. Pouting, F.R.G.S., occupied this distinguished photographic position. He is a man of wide experience in camera work, having photographed in practically the four corners of the earth, -and is also, of necessity, well versed iu kinematography. Mr Pouting began life at the cashier’s desk iu a Liverpool bank, but eventually sailed for California, the fruit farms and gold mines of which country held an attraction for him. He took with him an , enthusiasm (or amateur photography, and it was this hobby which subsequently brought him into contact with an American firm, and soon he was making a trip round the world at their expense, describing and illustrating the life of many countries. Mr Pouting has done much camera work in Japan, and a sample of his journalistic abilities is to be found iu an interesting volume, “In Lotus Laud : Japan,” He accompanied the Japanese army through the Russo-Japanese War, under engagement to certain American firms, and there encountered experiences both severe and comical.

The plates used by this gentleman while on his trip to the southern icefields were isochromatic, in conjunction with a colour screen. He used both a stand camera and a reflex, the latter usually ior animal pictures. The extreme cold in the Antarctic, ot couise, had the aggravating effect of freezing the apparatus, and consequently varying the shutter efficiency,. The effects of temperature made themselves felt in other ways. He would take off his glove and put his hand near the lens ; instantly the lens is coated with a film of ice which no mere rubbing will remove. Sometimes moisture condensing into the finest particles of ice will get inside the lens. On touching with your naked hand a brass knob on the apparatus, the brass burns like a hot iron. On one occasion Mr Pouting was focussing under bis cloth, when he happened to moisten his lips. The point of his tongue caught for an instant against the metal of the camera, froze there, and was only to be released by tearing the flesh. In spite of this, he developed his large number of plates, and a good deal of his cinematograph film, out in the Antarctic, building a fine dark-room in the hut at headquarters, where, x he says, conditions were quite comfortable. He has in his possession heaps of photographs of Antarctic life and landscape—or “icescape”— showing, by means of telephotography, mountains practically unknown before, and by the aid of flashlight the activities of the shore party or an iceberg looming up in the Antarctic night. Mr Footing stayed in the Antarctic until the yearly night was approaching, when he returned by the Terra Nova, and, still as a member ot the expedition, he is