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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 'longfellow' 6x18 medium format panoramic camera

The 'Longfellow' is a medium format panoramic camera that utilizes fused bodies of two 6x9 folders. The Super angulon 90 was mounted on a cone. The two backs were held using a fish plate. Though not combined into a single piece,the two pressure plates can hold the film flat quite adequately. The resulting format is 6x18.
 

The details of construction appears in the book "Medium and large format photography: moving beyond 35mm for better pictures" By Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz, well known for their other books on photography as well. Information on  a few other handmade cameras including one made by Roger also appears in the book.

Some discussion in this context can be found in this forum post.  I thank Mr. Hicks for granting permission to use these picture. His website http://rogerandfrances.com/ is a goldmine of information on many type of cameras and photographic techniques. Keep an eye over the site contents, as soon a 'how to make it' section will appear there. 

Handmade rotational panoramic camera by Mats Wernersson

 

A very nice example of a rotational panoramic camera handmade by  Mats Wernersson. In these type of cameras, the body of the camera rotates while exposing a continuous strip of film through a small slit and capable of scanning a 360 degrees sector.

The Seitz Roundshot, Hulcherama and the recent Lomo Spinner 360 fall into this category of cameras. This particular camera is made of PVC plastic and utilizes medium format film. To know about more on rotational panoramic cameras covered in my blog, click here.

The details of the camera including construction snapshots are available here.

I thank Mats for allowing me to use this picture. Mats have a great website on his own handmade cameras that include many novel analog and digital systems. Visit his site at http://cameramaker.se

The great handmade panoramic cameras of Josip Klarica-II

This is another great panoramic camera from Josip Klarica's collection. Marked #6 in his web page http://obscuranova.com, this is a medium format swing lens panoramic camera. 

Constructed by Duro Susic, Prague, Czech Republic, this takes 6x18 panoramic images. The lens is a Meopta 75 mm f/2.8 and three shutter speeds of 1 sec, 1 / 30 sec and 1 / 100 sec are available. The material of construction is metal and leather.

Mr. Clarica has a very distinctive style of photography and to know more details of it visit his website http://obscuranova.com and this link

I thank Mr. Klarica very much for providing the detailed description and  high resolution pics of this camera. You can download the rest of the pics from here. Please note that the copyright for the photographs of the camera belong to Josip Klarica and you may need his permission  for using any of them.

The great handmade panoramic cameras of Josip Klarica-I

Some time ago thru' a www.bing.com search I came to know about Josip Klarica, an eminent photographer from Croatia.  The opening page of his website http://obscuranova.com pointed to the great collection of cameras he has and particularly the two handmade panoramic cameras drew my attention.

This Panoramatic camera, handmade by Mr. Josip Klarica is a replica  of  the "Camera Megascope", a large format panoramic camera constructed by Friedrich Martens of Paris in 1845. 

The format of the negative produced  is 18X60 cm !!!. The lens is a vintage Symmetric anastigmat 210 mm made by  A. Ross ,of London in 1932. The exposure is made by manually turning the lens. Materials for construction include wood, leather and cardboard. 

You can have an idea how big the camera ( marked #7 in his webpage) is by looking at this picture. Quite obviously due to the huge size of the negatives the pictures they yield are also simply fascinating.

Mr. Clarica has a very distinctive style of photography and to know more details of it visit his website http://obscuranova.com and this link.

I thank Mr. Klarica very much for providing the detailed description and so many high resolution photographs of this camera. You can download and view the rest of the pictures in a ~17MB zipped file from here. Please note that the copyright for the photographs of the camera belong to Josip Klarica and you need his permission(s) for  using any of them.