Handmade 6x12 panoramic camera

Another novel design that was offered by the ebay seller 'mn_2oox' was a 6x12 panoramic camera.

This camera has an interchangeable lens mount and can accept both 120 and 220 films.

You can download the details in pdf format from here.

Disclaimer: I'm no way related to the seller and not endorsing any way his/her products

Handmade 35mm panoramic camera

A couple of weeks ago I found two handmade cameras offered by the ebay seller 'mn_2oox'. This particular camera accepts 35mm film and produces ultra long 24x108 mm negatives.

A brief feedback searching revealed that this seller has an excellent reputation of selling handmade/modified cameras. One can further query him to know if he has some new things to offer next.

I've saved the details of the camera in pdf format and you can download it from here.

Disclaimer: I'm no way related to the seller and not endorsing any way his/her products

Fetching handmade cameras from Ebay

I'm buying photographic items from Ebay for many years. Other than buying conventional items I also keep an watchful eye over novel gadgets which include handmade cameras. If you're lucky enough, some simple search phrases like 'handmade camera', 'homemade camera', 'camera + project', 'DIY camera', 'modified camera' etc can fetch you very interesting stuffs.

In my next posts I'll talk about two very novel handmade panoramic cameras I came across in ebay.

Panoramic film formats (2)

This picture gives you an idea of how a Horizon S3 Pro( I have one ) or a Fuji 617 or a 6x12 panoramic compares to normal sized negatives.

I thank Mr Lachlan Doig for kindly providing the picture. Mouse over the original picture to see the annotaions. For more panoramic pictures by Lachlan Doig click here.

Panoramic film formats (1)

In film based panoramic photography, a large number of formats exist.Both 35mm and medium format panoramic cameras offer a variety of aspect ratios.The common theme that underlies all these formats is the long, slender look of the slides, signifying the high length:width ratio of panoramic format.

One can very easily visually compare many of the available sizes from this Flickr photo.

This photo of different pano slides was taken and kindly provided by panoramaXL.

Click here to see the original pic and know to which camera the format belongs to.

Check also panoramaXL's blog for many more interesting topics on panoramic photography.

A cheap perspective control (PC) lens

Perspective control or 'PC' lenses are useful for architectural photography, to get rid of converging verticals.
All large format and some medium format cameras offer very simple lens movement or 'shift' function built in the camera body itself. For 35mm cameras one has to depend on expensive tilt-shift lenses. Major manufacturers of TS lenses or adapters include Nikon, Canon , Hartblei etc. The Loreo company came up with a cheap and simple PC lens, which can be used stand-alone for most popular SLR brands.

This 3 element lens has two apertures and offers 3.5mm shift off axis in any direction. The lens (and many other innovative gadgets) can be bought directly from http://loreo.com or various other sellers, including Ebay sellers.

Homemade 6x17 panoramic camera

I came across even another design of handmade 6x17 panoramic camera. This camera was sold on ebay, and the details of the cameramaker is not available at this moment

The body of the camera was constructed from cut-away halves of a 6x6 camera, and lens focussing is done by means of enlarger bellows.

Thankfully Mr. Allan Chen got the pic and descriptions saved from ebay, and you can visit his blog for further details.

A great panoramic photographer: Jaspal Jandu

From the list of panoramic photographers by Ben McDermont, I found the great panoramas by Jaspal Jandu. Being an young photographer from UK, he travels across the continents with a Linhof Technorama, taking astounding panoramic pictures.

Here's a video of some of his representative panoramas:



His website is www.jaspaljandu.com and you can read his typepad blog here. To know more about him read this interview of Jaspal

19 great panoramic photographers

I came across this great list in Ben McDarmont's blog. I particularly liked Jaspal Jandu's work very much. The list can be found here. Another great list of panoramic photographers can be found at http://www.panorama-gallery.com/ 

Sun position variation

The Sun follows a varying trajectory in the sky, during different times of the year. The variations include different rising and setting positions and elevation. A very good visual representation of which can be obtained by photographing the Sun's course by very long exposure. Otherwise known as Solargraphs, these photographs are often made by exposing in order of several months. The following picture taken by Justin Quinnell shows the Sun's position in the sky using a six(!!!!) months long exposure and using a pinhole camera . For more pics and methods visit his site http://www.pinholephotography.org/

Seitz Roundshot in action

Have a look at how wilderness photographer Carl Heilman  sets and takes photo with a Seitz Roundshot 360 degree panoramic camera.Particularly notice how the photographer positions himself to exclude him from the frame.