A Graflex/Wray Stereographic conversion: the CieLisT panoramic camera

While searching google.co.uk for images of panoramic cameras, I stumbled upon a fascinating find on John Wade’s website. John is well known in the photographic community, having authored over thirty meticulously researched books on photographic history, antique and specialty cameras, and related topics.

This particular camera belongs to John’s personal collection. It was originally built by C. Leslie Thomson, an engineer renowned for fabricating his own panoramic and stereo cameras. 

Impressively, its film path measures 95 cm. In modifying what began as a Stereo Graphic camera, the twin-lens assembly was replaced by a rectangular lens cone fitted with a Schneider-Kreuznach Angulon 90mm f/6.8 lens. A Zeiss Ikon viewfinder designed for a 30mm lens (with panoramic masks) aids in composing the scene. Meanwhile, a new frame counter labeled “1–8” replaced the original counter, ensuring that the disc rotates fully twice as the 95 cm long exposed film is winded up.

I’m very grateful to John for allowing me to share these photographs. He even provided a rear-view image that shows the camera’s construction in greater detail.

I highly recommend you visit John’s site and explore the wealth of information he’s compiled. His many books are especially worth a look, and I’ve already put Clockwork Cameras on my personal wishlist.

You can listen to John's interview on panoramic cameras where this particular camera finds a special mention.

A Superb Book on Panoramic Cameras by Brian Polden

During a recent conversation with Garry Alexander about the Electropan Panoramic camera, he recommended an extraordinary book on panoramic cameras. Intrigued, I immediately ordered it from a UK-based vendor. I’m delighted to report that it’s a truly remarkable resource—easily the best, most comprehensive book on this subject that I’ve encountered so far.

At around 550 pages, this hefty volume delves deep into the history and technology of panoramic cameras, from photography’s earliest days to the present. It’s packed with photographs, cutaway diagrams, and an impressive wealth of well-researched details on countless panoramic camera models. For anyone who’s serious about panoramic photography, this book by Brian Polden is absolutely essential. We owe him our thanks for creating such a valuable contribution to the community.

Because the book is quite extensive, I anticipate needing at least a month to go through it thoroughly. Once I’ve done so, I’ll be writing a comprehensive review on it.


Meanwhile, I want to acknowledge Garry Alexander for alerting me to this gem. Garry maintains an excellent website dedicated to panoramic cameras (among other interesting cameras), and he’s also deeply involved in mechanical automata, another topic that fascinates me. If you share a love for mechanical marvels like I do, I highly recommend visiting Cabaret Mechanical Theatre to explore more of Garry’s interests.


The book was published in 2019 and there are only a few resources discussing it. You can have look at the table of contents from the Publisher's site. 

A glimpse on Seitz's Roundshot series of pano cameras as mentioned in this book can be found from Seitz's web page


I purchased my copy from PostScript in the UK, and their service was commendably quick, delivering the book across the Atlantic. I’m very pleased with their professionalism and would highly recommend them.

A rare Find: The Electropan Panoramic camera

My first encounter with this intriguing camera was in Joseph Meehan's authoritative book on panoramic photography, where it was briefly mentioned under the category of swing-lens panoramic cameras. At that time, my curiosity was piqued, but my initial internet searches yielded no results.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. While revisiting Meehan's book, I was reminded of this elusive camera. A quick online search this time bore fruit—finally, a clue! It turned out the camera was sold on eBay back in March 2024. From what I’ve gathered, it’s a motor-driven swing-lens panoramic camera, reminiscent of the iconic Noblex models.

Details about this camera remain scarce, If you, dear readers, have any information, photographs, or insights about this camera, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.

You can find a picture and a few more details about this camera on this linked page.

As I was writing this blog post, a little bit more delving into the matter revealed more information on this camera. It appears that Electropan was built by Kornelius Scorle, some old pics of him and his cameras appeared in the August issue of IAPP magazine which can be found here.

Looks like Mr. Schorle is still very much into panoramic photography as this link points to his recent works.

P.S: During the holiday season I'll be posting on some more panoramic cameras , equipments etc. 

A Canon F1 based panoramic grind-o-rama camera

 To continue with the grind-o-ramas, I present one Canon F1 based panoramic camera. The information was taken from a long concluded Ebay auction and I thank the seller for using the pics.

The length of the film is 24x65 and the lens is a standard medium format 75mm f6.3

Grind-o-Ramas by Olivier Alonzo

 In Grind-o-Rama panoramic conversions,  the film gate of a SLR/rangefinder is grinded off, thereby generating a longer film path to accommodate a panoramic exposure

Recently Olivier Alonzo shared his collections of handmade panoramic cameras. Part of the collection consist of Canon 7 rangefinder derived and Wirgin Stereo camera based panoramic camera with coupled rangefinder !!!!

For this Canon 7 body, the lens mated was a Bronica 50mm. Whereas for the Wigin, a Super Angulon 47 mm (also a Mamiya Press 50mm in another construction) has been used with rangefinder coupling, generating stunning sharp 24x92 exposures.

There are also other examples of  Mamiya TLR lens based panoramic cameras. 

I thank Olivier Alonzo very much for sharing the information. You can visit his Flickr Gallery to get the details of construction of these cameras and see example photographs taken by these great cameras.

A fantastic 6x12 swing-lens panoramic camera by Simon Lund

Sorry for keeping the viewers of this blog waiting for one year. I'm finally back with some more panoramic cameras. When I'm not posting, I'm actively collecting information on handmade panoramic cameras and I'm glad to share some of them with you today

Handmade swing-lens cameras are exceedingly rare because of the difficulties in construction. I have managed to cover only 3-4 of them before. Some months ago Simon Lund shared his story of making a 6x12 swing-lens panoramic camera and some examples of some very artistic and sharp panoramic exposures made by him.

This 6x12  camera was constructed using the 40mm lens taken from a Leica CL and the body was machined from Aluminum

Here are some more pictures showing the internals and outer appearance of the camera. A great machining example indeed.


 

I thank Simon Lund very much for this information. You can view his photographic website at simonlund.com and particularly the panoramic photographs from this link

The panoramic stereo camera by Manfred Graumann

 Again a masterpiece by Manfred Graumann. I've written about many cameras built by Manfred Graumann in the past. Over the years, his website went defunct and the archived website missed many important information including information on this camera. I recently found this camera in one auction site and want to share with you. 

The camera was built over a Meopta copying apparatus , the same thing which "razzledog" used to build his pano cam.  

The IPAN panoramic camera by Michael Lawton

 The first of the two short posts of today. I've written about the Michael Lawton made panoramic camera before in my blog. The IPAN has become exceedingly rare to be found in common auction sites. However, recently I found one and want to share the pics with you. Check particularly the  price tag !!!!!

Chinese(?) made 6x17

 
The link for this camera was sitting in my bookmarks since 2011 and I overlooked it somehow. Looks like this is made by somebody from China with some very useful features incorporated like a dark slide. I'm providing the link to the archived web site where you can find the details.

Note that if you follow the link where it came from originally, you may land up on some very nice innovations from China , like this  medium format example.

Swiss made 6x12s

 

These two handmade 6x12 cameras were brought to my notice about a year back by the builder himself. They are made by a person from Switzerland. Very elegant in design and of superior craftsmanship , one is a fused body 6x12 and the other being bellows focused with a 6x12 back.


I'm providing the links below, where you can find a lot of details about their construction. 

Bellows focused 6x12

Fused body 6x12

More handmade (panoramic) cameras from Japan

 

Over the past years I came across quite a many excellent Japanese sites on handmade cameras, some of which I mentioned in my earlier blog posts. Today, I'm going to present another such informative Japanese site detailing bunches of handmade cameras, many being panoramics. 

I discovered the site many years back. The person behind this site also runs the Nagoya handmade camera club in Nagoya, Japan and the site is actively maintained. 

Note: The original website went defunct. You might find the old archived site to complement the information available in the new site.

Grind-o-rama , expanded film gate panoramics

 Recently, some builders re-introduced panoramic cameras built from standard 35mm cameras for which the film path has been grinded away to extend the film gate.

The shutter mechanism, pentaprism etc. are discarded, retaining only the film transport mechanism. A lens cone is attached to the body with a mated medium or large format lens. Depending on the camera and the extra space that can be accommodated for the extended film path,  3:1 or even longer aspect panoramics can be made.

Check this video which reviews one of such camera , The Presspan

You can find some more internal pics of the camera here.

I'll be back soon with some more Grind-o-ramas

Hand made film camera group(s) in popular social media

I found the Facebook group "Hand made film camera" to be  a very useful resource. This is a group with over 10K members and frequented by many well known panoramic camera makers.

You can find the works of Dirk Fletcher, Freeman Lin, Steve Smith, Andrew Bieber, Giorgio Giovanni Maria Jano, Marco Kroeger and many others. Marco's cameras demand a separate post altogether and I'll write one soon. Search the groups with terms like "panoramic" and "panorama" and you'll get many hits.

I'll keep this post updated as I find more such groups in social media. 

A Blog on Panoramic Photography

I just found a very nice panoramic photography blog. The site is in French which can be translated to your language of choice by Google translator. The blog features many reviews, history, collection of panoramic photos and many more

http://modepanoramique.blogspot.com/

Meet Dick Haviland, the last film re-spooler man standing

I recently came across the following  nice article on Dick Haviland , who runs the film re-spooling company "Films For Classics". The article was published in  B&H's website.

You can read the article here 

Josef Koudelka: Shooting the Holy Land

https://aperture.org/blog/shooting-holy-land/?fbclid=IwAR3N38I33XIWIj_yMtYq7TnAuAJtYlpsNNypo5iDH4hWf6d9KNiyCTMXSzg

DIY camera articles by Mike Rignall

If you've  browsed the website http://www.glascope.com/ , which  I mentioned in my previous post, then you might have found these DIY  articles  already.

To keep the matter short,  the website,  http://www.glascope.com/ which is a great source of information on stereo and panoramic photography, has a collection of several articles on DIY cameras. Most of these are authored by Mike Rignall which appeared in the British magazine "Amateur Photographer".

Follow the link to get the  full collection of these articles.

I've covered some of Mike Rignall's cameras in my blog earlier. Search for "Wideboy panoramic camera" in google and hopefully you'll come up with many instances of Mike's handmade cameras. Check some of Steve Cox's albums in Flickr too.

I thank Mr. Peter of  http://www.glascope.com/ for kindly allowing me to use these pictures. He can also be found at the following ebay store.

Panoramic art forms: Postage stamps

The smallest size by which  panoramic pictures can be represented for the unaided eyes, are possibly postage stamps. I came across these panoramic postage stamps   years ago but never managed to write about it. For me , those were great treat for the eyes and I believe that you too will much appreciate these little pieces of art. 

Have a visit to the site http://www.glascope.com/ for many interesting topics on stereo photography and panoramics as well. You can visit their  store  to see the items they stock.

The full gallery of panoramic postage stamps and postcards can be found here.

I thank Mr. Peter of  http://www.glascope.com/ for kindly allowing me to use these pictures. He can also be found at the following ebay store. 

Forthcoming posts this spring / summer 2019

I'm back  from the hiatus. Though other obligations impeded me to make new blog posts, I kept on gathering information on handmade panoramic cameras during the time of inactivity which I always do.

Most notably, I found a plethora of cameras made by Japanese camera makers and I'll soon write about them one by one.

I was planning for long to write a post on books related to DIY camera making and  found some very interesting books. I will soon write about them.

I'll also make some posts on non panoramic cameras, particularly on the 6x9  format.

Thanks for your support.

Manfred Graumann and his handmade cameras

Handmade cameras by Manfred Graumann  were the first ones to  capture my interest in DIY panoramic photography. I first came across his website in 2005 and was amazed to see  24x105 mm handmade cameras.

I wrote about Manfred Graumann in one of the earliest  posts in my blog. Over the time part of his website went defunct, and information on certain cameras were lost. Though, some information could still be salvaged using the "Wayback machine" site archiving tool.

Sometime ago I came across  reports on a camera show in Ratingen, Germany which featured Mr. Graumann as well. It was wonderful to see him going strong. May he live long and make new cameras.

I'm enclosing the links pointing to the event. The pic. in this post, with him holding a stereo camera was taken from the first link. In the second link you'll find him with his handmade 24x93 panoramic.

https://www.infranken.de/regional/lichtenfels/Immer-m-ehr-Profis-bei-der-Michelauer-Fotoboerse;art220,658035


https://www.wz.de/nrw/kreis-mettmann/ratingen/trotz-trends-zur-digitalen-fotografie-gab-s-viel-analoges_aid-27774745

You can find another old newspaper report on him here.

I thank Mr. Klaus Gagel for allowing me to use this picture in my blog.