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 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.

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 !!!!!

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

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.

Some handmade panoramic cameras from portugal

After a long hiatus I become active again. Nevertheless, during this time of inactivity I  managed to get information on at least a dozen of handmade panoramic cameras, which I'll sequentially keep on publishing here.

Today I wish to present three cameras fabricated by Chave Treze from Portugal. He has several handmade cameras to his credit and I'll present three of his cameras which are of panoramic format. You can visit his webpage at http://chavetreze.blogspot.pt/

The first one is a converted Nikon F3 panoramic , with a Holga Lens that yields 24 x72 mm exposures. The details can be found here.

The second one one being a 35mm  slit-scan design. 

The third one too is a slit-scan but medium format. Read about the camera  here. 

There is a nice video on the last camera in action:

I thank Mr. Chave Treze for allowing me to use these pictures.

Swing lens panoramic cameras by Renzo Guerin

Swing lens panoramic cameras are harder to fabricate compared to their flatback equivalents. Apart from the mechanical intricacies involved, seldom one can use salvaged parts from other cameras like the body or film back /path. For these reasons, examples of handmade swing-lens panoramic cameras and related information are scanty compared to other types of panoramic cameras.

Over the years I was able to gather information on 3-4 swing lens cameras only for my blog and that's why  I felt very happy today when I stumbled upon not just one but two handmade swing-lens panoramic cameras.

I found them mentioned in the blog of Guilherme Maranhao. It appears that these two cameras, one a 35mm panoramic and other one being medium format were handmade by Renzo Guerin from Brazil. Mr. Renzo Guerin worked as an engineer and is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Since his teens, he was into making cameras.

The Medium format camera is made of a 75 mm lens and the other one has a 35 mm.

The following video link shows clearly the swing movement of the 135 format camera which produces long 24x70mm exposures, longer than the traditional Horizon, Widelux etc. cameras.





I thank Guilherme Maranhao for allowing me to use this pictures. More details and other pictures of these two cameras can be found in his blog post.

Note that Guilherme Maranhao is an award-wining great photographer and a camera tinkerer too. You can find many posts on  DIY photographic techniques, Camera building and modification in his blog.

For more information on his artwork, exhibitions, awards etc. visit this page.

The Japanese Handmade Camera Club : The league of extraordinary ladies and gentlemen

 I first heard about the Japanese Handmade Camera Club from a newsletter of Photographic History Society of Canada (PHSC).

This club is based at Tokyo and the members are accomplished camera makers who have fabricated extremely unusual and  novel cameras. In one of my earlier posts I've mentioned cameras made by Kensuke Hijikata of "Kentax" fame. Mr. Kensuke is one notable members of this club.

Mr. Sam Isamu Mabuchi of Japan Handmade Camera Club  compiled data on 53 cameras which were part of the exhibit at Tokyo and made it available as a slide show at   PHSC's website. There  were  so many handmade  panoramics, large formats, 6x9s and other novel cameras. I strongly recommend that you have a look at them. 

You can access the slide show  of these 53 cameras HERE. 

Later on, I found a video of the same camera club where members displaying and discussing their cameras. Note the panoramics specially. 

For the camera at 2:04 in the video, that tall, white, lighthouse shaped camera is a rotational panoramic made from a Pentax Auto 110  by Hijikata Kensuke. A report on that camera was published in Popular Photography many years ago. I wish to write about it and some other Japanese handmade cameras once I'm through with the copyrights.

Great handmade 24x105 panoramic camera by Sven Keller

I first noticed Sven Keller's site couple of years ago when Olaf Matthes pointed it out to me. Mr. Sven Keller is from Germany and he had self fabricated quite a few cameras.

One of the interesting designs include a fused body 35mm panoramic camera. He joined three bodies of Dacora Super Dignette cameras to form an extended film path that can yield a 24x105 mm exposure. The lens cone was salvaged from a Mamiya Press 6X9 camera. Different Mamiya lenses were used for the camera.

Further details of the camera can be found from this webpage.

I extend my sincere thanks to Sven for allowing me to use the pics of his camera from his website. 

Do visit his gallery to know about many more handmade and modified cameras.

Panormaic Photographer : Mark Capilitan

Enjoy the works of Mark Capitilan who extensively shoots with a Hasselblad/Fuji  XPan

http://www.markcapilitan-art.com/

Al Satterwhite's "NikonWide" panoramic camera

A few hours ago I received a mail from Olaf Matthes about a handmade 35 mm panoramic camera known as the "NikonWide" and made by the well known photographer Al Satterwhite.  

Olaf pointed out an old thread in Photo.net  describing some features of the camera. This was an interchangeable lens ( 65 and 135) 24 x 108 , 1:4 aspect ratio camera, made of two fused bodies. The camera also had an accurate self fabricated viewfinder.

Olaf also found a video on the camera, showing example shots and the lens changing procedure. I'll soon go through the book "Satterwhite on Color and Design" which contains some more details on the camera, and post it in my blog. 

Check the video , the first half being the Circuit , the classic rotational panoramic camera, the second part contains the details of the "NikonWide".

Many thanks to Olaf Matthes for this info, and motivating me to get out of my year long hibernation. For those who came late, click on Olaf Matthes link to know about his great handmade cameras.

New panoramic cameras from Holga

Recently two film panoramic cameras are launched by Holga, one is a 6x12 and the other one is an interchangeable lens 24x72 35 mm panoramic.


http://shop.holgadirect.com/products/holga-120-pan-panorama-camera

http://shop.holgadirect.com/products/holga-135-pan-panorama-camera

Nimslo based Holgawide

In another Nimslo panoramic conversion, Dirk Fletcher fused a Holga Medium Format Lens to a Nimslo body, for which the metal septums were sawn off.

I first came across this camera modification by Dirk in John Evans' book "Homemade Cameras: From Tin Cans to Precision Engineering", which I wish to review soon.

You can get the details of construction from Dirk's blog post, and can also see example photographs. 

I thank Dirk for permitting to use some of the pictures from his blog site. 

Handmade cameras by Kensuke Hijikata

Somedays ago while hunting for handmade panoramic cameras in the internet I came across this interesting post in photo.net . The post mentions a Japanese photographer and cameramaker who built a 24x72 panoramic camera made out of two fused bodies of  Konica 35 rangefinder, and which was featured in the March 1998 issue of Popular Photography magazine.

The post didn't mention about the cameramaker but I was able to get the copy of the magazine from my local library and found the cameramaker to be Kensuke Hijikata.

Kensuke Hijikata is a Tokyo based professional photographer/cameramaker who have fabricated more than 100 cameras, including a 4x5 TLR. He also established a handmare camera club which has grown up to 60 members. At the time of reporting he was making 4-5 cameras per year.

Pictures of four of his handmade cameras (along with pictures taken by them) were presented  in the Pop Photo article, including the 24x72 Konica based panoramic. The other cameras were a 6x7 with 80mm Schneider Xenar with a movable groundglass finder,an interchangable lens double railed 6x9 and another interchangable lens close focusing 6x9 technical camera. He named his brand of cameras as 'Kentax'.

The panoramic camera Kentax 2472 was equiped with a helicoid mounted 47mm Super Angulon. He also made his own viewfinder.

I was not able to find much information about Kensuke Hijikata over the internet, except for this site which is in Korean and mentions some of the cameras made by the Handmade Camera Club members. Use a suitable google translator to decipher it if necessary. It mentions about a very uncommon 110 film based panoramic camera( the only other subminiature format panoramic camera I know is the Viscawide)

I found another link that tells about  two mirror based pano cameras he designed which can use 4x5 or medium format film. Thanks to the original poster in the Yahoo Cameramakers Group.

I'll try to post the pictures of the cameras mentioned once I'm through with the copyright issues.

A 24x108 flatback panoramic film camera

This is a flatback panoramic camera providing around 4.5:1 aspect ratio on 35 mm film. The body was made out of a few sawn off Yashica MG rangefinders. The lens is an usual Super Angulon. For more details of the camera and examples of photographs taken by this camera visit the Clubsnap Forum

Thanks to Olaf Matthes who brought this camera to my notice and thanks to ed9119, a moderator of Clubsnap who took the pictures of this camera and granted  permission to post them.

The Lipari-Rama panoramic camera - II

Here go some more details of the Lipari-rama camera, particulary the parts involved in the rotaion. The previous  post detailing the camera body can be found here.

To see some fascinating panoramas taken by this camera visit Randy's Flickr page

I thank Randy for providing me the pictures along with their descriptions. Please note that the copyright for the pictures belong to him and you may not use them without his permission.

The Lipari-Rama panoramic camera - I

I first read about this camera in  Joseph Meehans book on panoramic photography. For long, I searched for this camera in the internet but never found any good closeup picture of the same.

Some time ago, I found quite a few pictures taken by this camera in Flickr. Upon request, the owner of this camera, Mr. Randy,  promptly sent me the pictures of this camera which he owns since 1991.

 

The Lipari-rama  was handmade by Jim Lipari of Omaha, NE. He was a renowned authority on Cirkut panoramic cameras. Google his name for more information.

This camera is a rotational panoramic camera, build on the body of a Nikon film SLR. Other camera brands too were used so far as I know. Like most other rotational cameras, a small battery operated motor rotates the camera as well as continuously draws the film. The exposure is made through a very narrow slit on the plane of the shutter curtain and with the mirror raised. The exposure is altered through controlling the rotation speed, which is in turn, a function of the applied voltage (see the pictures).

I just came across some more information on Jim Lipari along with a photograph of him with his Lipari-Rama camera ,in an old issue of the Panorama magazine. You can download the pdf from here (Page 3 top left). The camera was mentioned as 'Lipariwide'.

To see some fascinating panoramas taken by this camera visit Randy's Flickr page

I thank Randy for providing me the pictures along with their descriptions. Please note that the copyright for the pictures belong to him and you may not use them without his permission.