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 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.

A lightweight 6x12 by Dirk Fletcher

This is just another example of Dirk Fletcher's ingenuity. He used two old Zeiss Netter 6x6 folders to make a lightweight fused 6x12 body and complemented by a 65mm Super Angulon.

Dirk used an m58 helical and a Contax 21mm finder which provides around the same view for a 65 mm lens in 6x12 format. He also mentioned the details of calibrating the helical and that information could be very helpful for a beginner engaged in camera making.

You can find the details of the construction of this camera in Dirk Fletcher's blog post. Dirk has made many panoramic and other cameras over the years and his posts are laden with construction details which can immensely help a novice and as well as an expert in this field.

Detailed and close-up pictures of his handmade cameras can be found in his Flickr Gallery.

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.

More handmade panoramic cameras by Kevin Strandberg

Sometime ago I made a post on the Palm Press 6x9 camera , where I mentioned about Professor Kevin Strandberg and  his handmade cameras. I recently received some more photos and details of   those handmade cameras from  Kevin which I would like to share with the readers.

Kevin Strandberg is  Professor and School of Art Director at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington. Besides, he  is an expert in  camera making,  an activity he's indulging in since his teens. For a good read on that, have a look at this Washington Times article.  His website can be found here.

The two cameras in the forefront are two 6x12 cameras in vertical and horizontal format respectively. They were constructed using modified Cambo passport cameras and backs have much similarity to that of a Cambo Wide. One of the cameras is attached with a 65 Rodenstock Grandagon MC lens mounted on a matched focusing helicoid. The finder being salvaged from a broken Widepan camera. 

The second camera has a 75 mm Mamiya Polaroid 600 SE lens with a Cambo Wide finder. The film backs are Horseman 4x5 to 120 types and the lens protection bumpers were sourced from Horseman SW lenses.

The other cameras in the background are 6x9 wide angles made of Graflex XL bodies attached to Mamiya and Schneider lenses. The farthest one in the picture is still under construction and based on a Polaroid MP3 copy camera. like one of the 6x12s, it too has a vertical format with a Mamiya Press 75 mm on it.

I thank Professor Kevin Strandberg a lot for providing the pics and details for these cameras. You can learn more about his cameras , the artworks they produced and a book authored by Kevin  on these cameras from my earlier post.

You can read a short description on Kevin's "Franken Camera Project" from this Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine article.

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 6X14 panoramic camera by Sven Keller

In one of previous posts I've posted about the 135 mm panoramic camera made by Sven Keller from Germany.  In this post, let me present another of his great creation , a medium format 6x14 panoramic camera.


The film back for this camera was made two fused Graflex 6x9 backs. For the details of constructing the back follow  this link.

The lens is a Schneider Super Angulon which was mounted on a Konica helicoid. More details can be found here .

I thank Mr. Sven Keller for allowing me to use these pics. Do visit his website (in German) for many other interesting DIY camera modifications  and other related stuff. The English version of his website can be accessed here.

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.

A handmade 6X12 using Mamiya lens

Found in Ebay and brought to my attention by Olaf Matthes. A 6x12 medium format panoramic with Mamiya lens. Any information on this camera is welcome.

The Wideboy Panoramic Camera-II

 Many years ago I wrote about the Wideboy Panoramic camera in my blog. Wideboy and other panoramic cameras were made by Horsley Cameras of UK. My old blog post can be found here.  Many of the links in that old post went defunct over the years however certain information can still be retrieved from the archived websites. I've made an earlier post on how to fetch archived data from dead websites.

A couple of weeks ago I found an Wideboy Mark III being sold on Ebay, which rekindled my interest in that camera.

Wideboy is a swing lens medium format panoramic camera. A simple gadget  that has to be hand cranked to take the picture. Being a simple design it would very easy for the initiated to study the general principles of rotational panoramic cameras and improve it if necessary.

I'm not sure what kind of lens this particular version used. One of the models used an enlarger lens

I thank  a lot the Ebay seller "Green Mountain Camera" who sold this particular item and allowed me to use these pictures. The weblink to this Ebay seller is  http://www.ebay.com/usr/gmcamera

Check my old post on Wideboy/Horsley Cameras for some more information particularly on Mike Rignall who designed these cameras. Some extra information can still be found  from
http://mrmikerignall.wixsite.com/diy-cameras


You can learn more on the construction details of Wideboy from this article which got published in the November issue of Amataeur Photography magazine in 2014


An operating manual for the Wideboy Camera( and other Horsley/Mike Rignall made cameras ) can be downladed from here.

The Wide-tac panormaic camera : A handmade 6X17

Found recently another handmade 6X17 in Ebay. Appears that the film holder was made from two fused 6X9 film holders. The seller was generous enough to allow me to use the pics which is much appreciated.

The name of the camera is "Wide-tac". So far I didn't come across any source of information on this camera. Let me know if you know anything about this camera. Either directly email me the info, or use the comments section under the post.

A great introduction to the Linhof Technorama 6X12 PC

 A great introduction to the Linhof Technorama 6X12 Perspective Control Panoramic cameras by Bjorn Petersen

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/hands-review/classic-cameras-exploring-heights-linhof-technorama-612-pc

A Folder to panoramic Conversion by Dirk Fletcher

Here's another new handmade panoramic camera by Dirk Fletcher.The technical details of conversion of this Zeiss  Ikon folder to a 6X12 panoramic can be found here

Dirk Fletcher has made many cameras including panoramic cameras over the years. The details of these can be found in his web site. For more pictures of this and his other handmade cameras visit his Flickr page.

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

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.

Another example of Thomas Roma's 6x9

Here goes another example of Thomas Roma's 6x9 handmade camera that recently got sold on Ebay.

This time I got more pictures of the camera so one can have a better idea about the construction details.

I'm very thankful to Mr. Bruce Kinch, (AKA Dedwax in Ebay:Please read the disclaimer to the right of this webpage) for kindly permitting me to use the pictures of the camera. Like many times earlier, thanks are also due to Olaf Matthes for pointing me to the auction.

A mahogany 4x5 with 6x12 back

A real elegent masterpiece by Jack Tait. The camera is a  mahogany clad, aluminium frame 4x5 camera able to take 6x12 back for Panoramic work.

I thank Mr. Tait for providing the pictures and information on the cameras. To know more about him and his works, visit his website:

http://web.me.com/jacktait/Taitographs2/Home.html