Wow, what's with the awful low resolution scans? As public domain historical material, I thought they'd want to offer them at the best resolution possible.
The photographs found in Captain Scott’s expedition base at Cape Evans, Antarctica required specialist conservation treatment. The Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ) engaged Photographic Conservator Mark Strange to undertake the painstaking task of separating, cleaning (including removing mould) and consolidating the cellulose nitrate image layers. Twenty-two separate sheets were revealed and sent to New Zealand Micrographic Services for scanning using a Lanovia pre-press scanner. The digital scans were converted to digital positives.
So it at least sounds like they would have captured most of the available detail.
Ah, I shouldn't have said scans. What I meant was why are they only serving these crappy low-resolution images to the public, rather than making the originals available. I hope this was inadvertent rather than deliberate.
If you'd like to see the images as large as they are (warning: SWF): http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8...