The Scovill Panoramic Camera

During a  recent visit to PHSNE Photographica show I picked up a  few old issues of "The Photographist" magazine. This was the journal of the western phototographic collectors association and each issue is a gold mine of information on camera and accessories of the yesteryear.

 One of the magazines which I picked up had a very detailed account on the Scovill Panoramic Camera written by Mike Kessler.

The Scovill pano camera was made in USA by the Scovill and Adams Co. in New York. The patent for the camera was granted to Mr. Mathias Flammang, an employee at Scovill.

I hope you'll enjoy reading about this camera and please provide me information if any  you seem relevant to this or other related  cameras.  

Refitting a Globuscope 4X5

I recently came across this excellent piece of  technical description of refitting a Globuscope 4X5 camera by Dirk Fletcher


Dirk has built many cameras over the years and notably quite a many of them are panoramic cameras. The details of  these cameras can be found from his web site or his Flickr page

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 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.

A 4x10 panoramic camera!!!!!

Panoramic cameras come in all varieties so far film size is concerned, from subminiature to ultra large formats. Though smaller format cameras are easy to handle, photographers who need quality negatives hardly ever compromise with large format.

I recently came across a grand 4x10 camera handmade by Mr. Matt Sampson. This camera also finds mention in Lee Frost's book  'Panoramic Photography'.

This camera is mostly made of wood and uses Schneider 121/8 Super Angulon lens in a Schneider helical mount on an Ebony top hat panel. According to Matt, he originally designed the camera around a Schneider 90XL lens with the 121mm as a second option,  however  the 90mm was too wide for most cases and so the 121 is used now.

The focussing ground glass was made by Satin Snow of US. Matt suggested that a magnifying plastic fresnel, commonly available from bookstores or overhead projector fresnel might be a low cost alternative for composition, though it may be too coarse for focussing.

To keep the system handmade as much as possible, the darkslides too were made by Matt himself by joining two conventional 5x4 slides together end to end and reinforcing with metal angle. The sheaths are a sandwich of thin ply and tinfoil. Making the slides light tight was a difficult job but was successful eventually(Click the picture at right)

Visit Matt's website http://www.mattsampsonphotography.com to view the galleries and many examples of panoramic shots taken by different handmade panoramic cameras. An example picture of the Bat's Head taken by this camera is provided below.

I thank Matt very much for his generousity in  providing the pictures, the details of the camera and for his encouraging words. I'll write about his other handmade camera in my next post. Thanks to Olaf Matthes for pointing me  to this source of information.

The 'Yanulpan' behemoth

I always feel very excited every time I discover a new type of panoramic camera. This time I found the 'Yanulpan', a behemoth large format swing lens panoramic camera. The discovery was serendipitous, as I was searching ebay for panoramic cameras.

A little google search yielded quite a bit information about this camera. The 'Yanulpan delineator' cameras were hand made by Tom Yanul , a large format specialist.

These are very large format cameras and this particular one which is listed on ebay ( by Tom Yanul himself ) has 7" Dagor lens with 150 degrees horizontal coverage. A general description of the cameras he made can be found in this page .

Read more about Tom Yanul here . To know about the details of his camera visit the Yanulpan page. Some examples of panoramic shots of Chicago taken by this camera can be found here .

I thnak Mr. Yanul for allowing me to use the picture.

I later found a picture of the Yanulpan along with its creator Tom Yanul himself. I thank Metropole Paris for the picture.

Disclaimer: I'm no way related to the seller(s). Neither I'm endorsing their product anyway. If you are going to bid/buy based on the information I provided, bid/buy at your own risk.