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.