Very very very panoramic camera

[nuckabean]

I had an idea (which I'm sure has been done before) to build a camera that would use a roll of 135 film to take one exposure. Is this an impossible act? it seems like it could be done with a pinhole far enough from the film plane or a very long lens that's set on infinity (to avoid using bellows). Any advice on doing something like this?

[brofkand]

Well, you would obviously need to load and unload the camera in perfect darkness, and the camera would need to be both very long and very wide to provide a pinhole enough depth to cover the entire length of the strip.

[keithwms]

How about affixing 35mm film in an LF film holder. Maybe you could deploy one of those film strip mounts for scanning as a way to hold it flat and draw it taut. I don't think registry will be much of an issue if you are willing to stop down a bit more than usual.

I will just say this, I [stupidly] taped some roll film into an LF holder and it kinda worked but it made a mess. I'll not repeat that exercise!

Compositonally, I suspect that you'll be hard pressed to come up with a compelling composition beyond a ratio of 6:24 or so.

Just for your amusement, here is a silly shot that I did at Arlington cemetary using a kaidan 360 on my rb67, using astia. What you get is a circular image on the film, then you scan that and run it through "dewarping" software.

[amuderick]

Look for information on the Globuscope, SpinShot 35S, or the Larscan. The latter is my current camera building project. All are slit-scan rotating cameras. The longer the lens, the larger the piece of film which is required for a 360. The longer the lens, the smaller the vertical angle of coverage on the film.

[jnanian]

you could make a camera obscura ...

[AgX]

This has been done in the fifties in the `Horizoncamera´ by the Dutch company Oude Delft.
A spooled film was running via a full-circle loop, emulsion inwards. Coaxial, placed a bit higher, was the lens, of a periscopic type (very special...), which projected a radial 360° image onto the film. Thus giving an exposure of nearly (due to the opening of the loop) 360° horizontally.

I got no idea though how to resemble such a lens with amateur means.

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

A full roll of 24x36 (36exp) is at least 1,3 meters wide (4,2ft or 51in), so you would need a lens with an illumination circle of at least that size to expose all the film at once. This does not resolve to a specific focal lens, but let's say that if you wanted a "normal" lens, it would probably have to be somewhere around 1500mm. (A normal lens for 20x24 ULF starts around 800mm)

The other option would be to use a slit mechanism, as you can find in Cirkut cameras or photo-finish cameras.

The camera obscura solution would definitely be the most economical solution.

[pauliej]

Do a search for Lookaround Camera. Also try panoramacamera.us/35mmfilm and you should find interesting stuff. I hope this helps you.

paulie

[jnanian]

3"* focal length will give you the image circle of a pinhole ...
i think one of the morell books explains how to turn a room into
a camera ...

have fun!

[Stephen Frizza]

there is a gentleman in Australia who built a camera that takes razor sharp panoramics where the frame size is the complete length on one roll of 120 film. it looks awesome his name is Mick turner
http://www.sydneygalleries.com.au/Pr...&CategoryID=16

this is the only link of the internet i can find showing images he has created with his hand made camera. sadly they dont do any justice compared to viewing his transparencies on a light box.