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.

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

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

Hand made film camera group(s) in popular social media

I found the Facebook group "Hand made film camera" to be  a very useful resource. This is a group with over 10K members and frequented by many well known panoramic camera makers.

You can find the works of Dirk Fletcher, Freeman Lin, Steve Smith, Andrew Bieber, Giorgio Giovanni Maria Jano, Marco Kroeger and many others. Marco's cameras demand a separate post altogether and I'll write one soon. Search the groups with terms like "panoramic" and "panorama" and you'll get many hits.

I'll keep this post updated as I find more such groups in social media. 

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.

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.

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 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.

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 '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. 

Panoramic conversion of medium format stereo camera

This is a nice example of panoramic conversion of a medium format 'Sputnik' stereocamera. This 6x12 panoramic camera was handmade by Claudio Bottari, an eminent camera maker from Italy. The lens is a Schneider Super Angulon 1:5,6/65 mm and the viewfinder is salvaged from a Russian Horizont 35mm panoramic camera. The steps of the  fabrication process is given here.

Mr. Bottari made quite a few interesting cameras, panoramic back,  pano head etc.The details can be found from his website http://www.claudiobottari.com/

I thank Mr. Bottari for his permission to use this pics. Thanks also to Olaf Matthes who first pointed this website to me.

Some more handmade panoramic cameras

Looks like this  website is related to Horsley Camera, UK well known for their Wideboy and other panoramic cmaeras. The website provides extra information on a shift pinhole and a stereo panoramic camera.

I also found a piece of instructional matter for how to make a DIY motorised 35mm rotational panoramic camera by Mike Rignall here

See my earlier post on Horsley cameras. 

I found a couple of example photos taken by Mike Rignall using his rotational camere in Photosig . 

A great handmade 6x12 panoramic camera

Have a look how Steve Smith constructs his 6X12 step-by-step from simple starting materials. The lens he'll be going to use is a large format Super Angulon 65mm. He also fabricated a helicoid focussing mount of his own. The viewfinder is handmade too. The camera is now almost complete. To have a regular update visit this page.

I thank Mr. Steve Smith for allowing me to use this picture. To see more of his works have a visit to his site.

Nipan: Nikkormat goes panoramic

In another brilliant panoramic conversion by Olaf Matthes, two Nikkormat camera bodies were used. The cameras were fused together to give a long 24x108 mm negative. The lens used was a Super Angulon 5.6/65mm.

Thanks Olaff for sharing the information and permission for reproduction of the picture. The construction details are available here.

To see some pictures taken by this camera click here.

Nikon F2 based panoramic camera

A great 24x72 mm hand built panoramic camera by Olaf Matthes. In essence, the film path of the Nikon F2 was elongated by milling off portions of metal so as to expose two frames of film. The lens used to cover this new film path was a Sinaron digital 4.5/35mm with 120° angle of coverage.

Thanks to Mr. Matthes for providing the details of the camera . For more information about the fabrication click here.

The Ipan panoramic camera

An ingenious design by Michael Lawton. The first prototype of the Ipan camera was made in 1973 and from 1979 to 1984 around 50 copies were made. Very few details are available in the internet as well as in printed media, till I discovered the excellent site of Mr. Olaf Matthes , himself being a great panoramic photographer and camera builder.

I'm very thankful to Mr. Matthes for kindly allowing to use this picture. To know more about this camera and other works of Olaf Matthes click here.

Panoramic camera construction guides (1)

Numerous examples of handmade panoramic camera can be found in the internet or in some printed materials. However, detailed guide for construction of such cameras are quite scanty. It often becomes very frustrating for a beginner to understand from where to start with, when building such a camera system.

SERENDIPITY SYSTEMS offers construction guides for a number of different panoramic cameras from easily available materials. These guide manuals are very cheap and contain easy to follow instructions.

The currently available guides include 6x17, 6x12 and 35mm panoramic camera construction. Soon, a 6x24 construction guide will be made available.

One can preview the blue prints from their website http://www.xtremedigitalphotography.com or visit the Ebay Store directly for purchase.

Disclaimer: I'm no way related to the seller and not endorsing any way his/her products