A Superb Book on Panoramic Cameras by Brian Polden

During a recent conversation with Garry Alexander about the Electropan Panoramic camera, he recommended an extraordinary book on panoramic cameras. Intrigued, I immediately ordered it from a UK-based vendor. I’m delighted to report that it’s a truly remarkable resource—easily the best, most comprehensive book on this subject that I’ve encountered so far.

At around 550 pages, this hefty volume delves deep into the history and technology of panoramic cameras, from photography’s earliest days to the present. It’s packed with photographs, cutaway diagrams, and an impressive wealth of well-researched details on countless panoramic camera models. For anyone who’s serious about panoramic photography, this book by Brian Polden is absolutely essential. We owe him our thanks for creating such a valuable contribution to the community.

Because the book is quite extensive, I anticipate needing at least a month to go through it thoroughly. Once I’ve done so, I’ll be writing a comprehensive review on it.


Meanwhile, I want to acknowledge Garry Alexander for alerting me to this gem. Garry maintains an excellent website dedicated to panoramic cameras (among other interesting cameras), and he’s also deeply involved in mechanical automata, another topic that fascinates me. If you share a love for mechanical marvels like I do, I highly recommend visiting Cabaret Mechanical Theatre to explore more of Garry’s interests.


The book was published in 2019 and there are only a few resources discussing it. You can have look at the table of contents from the Publisher's site. 

A glimpse on Seitz's Roundshot series of pano cameras as mentioned in this book can be found from Seitz's web page


I purchased my copy from PostScript in the UK, and their service was commendably quick, delivering the book across the Atlantic. I’m very pleased with their professionalism and would highly recommend them.

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 !!!!!

A Blog on Panoramic Photography

I just found a very nice panoramic photography blog. The site is in French which can be translated to your language of choice by Google translator. The blog features many reviews, history, collection of panoramic photos and many more

http://modepanoramique.blogspot.com/

Josef Koudelka: Shooting the Holy Land

https://aperture.org/blog/shooting-holy-land/?fbclid=IwAR3N38I33XIWIj_yMtYq7TnAuAJtYlpsNNypo5iDH4hWf6d9KNiyCTMXSzg

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.

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 note on broken website links in my blog posts

My blog is more than eight years old now and many of the URLs I've provided went defunct over the years.

It is unfortunate to say the least that so many informative sites can no longer exist. However, for some of them the information can be recovered at least partially if the site has been archived.

For those who don't know how to check if a site is archived, please go to the"Wayback Machine" at 

https://archive.org/ . 

Paste the link in the Wayback Machine text box and check if the site is archieved or not. In some cases you would see multiple snapshots of the page taken at different times. Check for a date/year closest to date of publication of that particular blog post where I mention about the web site. If your lucky you might be able to retrieve  some information at least. 

Secondly, if you come across any site you think worth archiving, you can submit that web link to the "Save Now" feature of Wayback's archiving tool. 

For a detailed method of archiving, please read this information:

https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/25/see-something-save-something/

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.  

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 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.

Enjoy some european panoramas

A very good site for european panoramas http://superpanoramas.com/eu/english/index.asp. Enjoy some more photos here.

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 Leme rotational panoramic camera

This is a rotational panoramic camera from Brazil, designed by Sebastião Carvalho Leme (1918-2007). The camera is able to take 360°panoramas.

For more details of the camera visit this wikipedia entry

The picture of the camera is under GFDL licensese, the details of the which is available here

A good short read on panoramic photography

I miss Marco Pauck's panoramic web site which went defunct. Here's a short but interesting account of panoramic photography, by Marco, particularly using the Horizon 202 swing lens camera.

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.

The Photographica 73 show by PHSNE

Recently I've been to the Photographica 73 show organized by Photographic Historical Society  of  New England (PHSNE). This bi-annual event  offers members and the public an opportunity to browse and buy new and vintage photographic items that include cameras,lenses, accessories and old prints.


I was lucky enough to pick up a handmade 127 format  panoramic camera for $12 (!!!). I'll write about it sometime later.

If you're interested, visit the PHSNE website to know about their activities including auctions and about the next Photographica show.

Pictures by 6x16 panoramic camera

Here are some example panoramic shots taken by Stan Patz by his 6x16 handmade panoramic camera. One can easily get the idea how beautiful they would look like when fully blown up.

Click on the pictures to see the bigger versions.

Visit Stan's website  http://www.patzimaging.com to see more of his works. For more details on this camera follow THIS link.

 

Please note that for all the pictures in this post ©Patz Imaging

Self published books on panoramic photography

I'm surprised to see so many books on panoramic photography available from  self publishing sites like blurb.com  or lulu.com

Some simple search phrases like 'panoramic photography' or 'panorama' can yield you a great many hits. Otherwise search by the name of your favorite panoramic camera or format like 'xpan', 'noblex', 'widelux', 'horizon 202','6x17' etc.

A convenient way to know about other panoramic photographers and their artworks.