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

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 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.

The Digital Horizon panoramic camera

The  Italian Silvestri company is working in collaboration with the Russian Zenit company to produce a digital panoramic camera. The Zenit is well known for its Horizon(t) series of swing lens panoramic cameras.

The new camera would feature three built in units of 5MP sensor and a f/3.5 28 mm lens, and three pictures will be taken simultaneously followed by in camera stiching to produce the final panorama. Because of simultaneous capture, moving objects will not pose any problem.

You can find more information from the following links available from Photoscala, British Journal of Photography and a very informative post by Michael Przewrocki.

A pdf information brochure on this camera can be found 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 Horizon 205 PC camera

The horizon 205 is a medium format swing lens panoramic camera. This is manufactured by the same company in Russia, which also produces the Horizon 202 and S3 series of panoramic cameras. 

This camera utilizes 120 rollfilm and the frame size is 50mm x 110mm . The lens is a fixed 50mm f.3.5 - f.22 with vertical shift. The following shutter speeds are provided: 1 sec., 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/30, and 1/60. 

Thanks to the owner of nightphoto.com for allowing me to use these pics. For more details and pictures of this unusual camera visit this page.

Do visit Nightphoto's homepage to know about many more interesting and unconventional cameras.

Panophic swing lens panoramic camera

The Panophic swing lens panoramic camera was made by the Panon company of Japan, the same company also manufactured the legendary Widelux cameras. 

The pictures shown here are that of a camera which recently got sold in ebay. I thank the seller for allowing me to use these pics.

Click on the pictures to see a larger version.

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 . 

Noblex in action

Look how the Medium format Noblex camera rotates, gaining up speed and then exposes the film. Unlike most other rotational panoramic cameras it can make multiple exposures.

Compare the movements of Noblex with that of Panon (Widelux) medium format swing lens panoramic camera.

Panoramic photographer: Michael von Graffenried

Watch noted panoramic photographer Michael von Graffenried
in action. He typically uses an Widelux and an X-pan

The original interview in German can be found here

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.

Panon in action video

The Panon company of Japan made the legendary Widelux series of swing lens panoramic cameras. Watch the rotational motion while it makes a 1/2 second exposure.

For more detailed pictures of this camera visit Novacon

The Wideboy panoramic camera

The term 'wide' is so obviously associated to so many panoramic camera brands like the legendary Widelux to multi format Widepan. The name list would be incomplete without the inclusion of Wideboy, a swing lens design by Horsley Cameras. Though less known than it's popular cousins, nevertheless it is a very interesting camera.

Horsley Camera of UK fabricates many types of panoramic cameras and not only just the Wideboy. Their inventory boasts of many novel designs of swing lens, 360 DEGREE rotational and even 'steam driven panoramics' !!!!.

Have a look at their product catalog and sample image gallery taken by these great cameras.

Don't forget to visit the page of Mike Rignall, the brain behind the Wideboy. Besides, information on even more interesting cameras, including shift lens panoramics are there.

The Cyclops panoramic camera

The Cyclops is a rotating lens 6x17 medium format panoramic camera. These were made in USA in 1990s and a few versions were built.

For more information and sample pics taken by this camera visit Gary Alexander's page at:

http://www.gaspweb.co.uk/cameras/cyclops.html

The following pages by Olaf Matthes contains some more details on the camera. Moreover, you can download the information brochure as well as the operating manual for Cyclops in pdf format.

http://www.nullmedium.de/panorama/info.html   and

http://www.olafmatthes.de/cameras/cyclops.php 

Also visit Graham patterson's site