New panoramic cameras from Holga

Recently two film panoramic cameras are launched by Holga, one is a 6x12 and the other one is an interchangeable lens 24x72 35 mm panoramic.


http://shop.holgadirect.com/products/holga-120-pan-panorama-camera

http://shop.holgadirect.com/products/holga-135-pan-panorama-camera

Blog Update

I've been a bit busy for the last few months to update my blog. However, I gathered information on quite a few handmade panoramic cameras meanwhile. I'll soon be posting about at least 3-4 pano cameras before the end of this year. These will include fused body cameras, stereo to pano converted camera, large format rotational  panoramic camera and others.




Wishing you a very happy new year in advance.

Nimslo based Holgawide

In another Nimslo panoramic conversion, Dirk Fletcher fused a Holga Medium Format Lens to a Nimslo body, for which the metal septums were sawn off.

I first came across this camera modification by Dirk in John Evans' book "Homemade Cameras: From Tin Cans to Precision Engineering", which I wish to review soon.

You can get the details of construction from Dirk's blog post, and can also see example photographs. 

I thank Dirk for permitting to use some of the pictures from his blog site. 

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.

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.

Another example of Thomas Roma's 6x9

Here goes another example of Thomas Roma's 6x9 handmade camera that recently got sold on Ebay.

This time I got more pictures of the camera so one can have a better idea about the construction details.

I'm very thankful to Mr. Bruce Kinch, (AKA Dedwax in Ebay:Please read the disclaimer to the right of this webpage) for kindly permitting me to use the pictures of the camera. Like many times earlier, thanks are also due to Olaf Matthes for pointing me to the auction.

Enjoy some european panoramas

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