City Panoramas: In March 1993 I was preparing for a group show and had decided that my contribution of a dozen or so pictures would be panoramic images made in the City of London. I can no longer remember which of these images made the final cut for the show which was with a group ‘London Documentary Photographers‘ which had been formed by Mike Seaborne who was then the curator of photographs at the Museum of London, although I think the show took place in Swiss Cottage Library.
I worked on the project for several days in March and April, making over a hundred pictures. I think these were probably all made on the Japanese Panon Widelux F8 which I had bought the previous year, though in later years I preferred the much cheaper Russian Horizon.
Both cameras worked on a similar basis, with 35mm film curved around about a third of a cylindrical path and a lens at the centre of this cylinder rotating during exposure, a slit behind the lens exposing the film. The lens was powered by clockwork and the ‘shutter speed’ depended on the speed of rotation and the width of the slit. So the actual rotation might take 1/30s but each part of the film might only be exposed for 1/250s.
Because of the curved film the distance between the lens centre and the film remained constant – and so did the magnification of the subject. With normal wide-angle (rectilinear) lenses the lens to film distance increases as you move away from the centre of the image, producing a stretching of the subject towards the edges of the frame, limiting their useful horizontal angle of view to less than 90 degrees. The film curvature eliminates this stretching but at the expense of producing a noticeable curvature of the subject except across the central line – normally the horizon – of the image.
Although you can use these cameras handheld, for most purposes – and all these images – they need to be carefully levelled on a firm tripod, and I carried a sturdy (and heavy) Manfrotto to eneble me to work from roughly eye-level. The Panon has a viewfinder but I found it more accurate to work by the two arrows inscribed on its top plate indicating the field of view. I also carried a roughly 12 inch carpenter’s spirit level to ensure the camera was properly levelled – rather more precise than the little bubble on the top plate.
F8 I think simply meant it was the 8th design by Panon, and the lens was a 26mm f2.8, though it did need to be stopped down to f8 for these pictures. The camera does not focus and wide open it is only sharp at around 2 metres; at f8 it becomes almost sharp to infinity, though for distant landscapes f11 improves things. The camera also has a very limited choice of shutter speeds – 1/15, 1/125, and 1/250th.
It gives negatives which are roughly the width of those from a medium format camera, but the normal 24mm height of 35mm cameras.
You can read a little more about the camera and see some black and white images I made shortly after buying the camera here on >Re:PHOTO at Bow Creek Panoramas – 1992. That post begins “At the end of 1991 I finally bought my first panoramic camera, a Japanese Widelux F8 which I couldn’t really afford” and the camera then cost me roughly a month’s wages. These cameras were last made around 2000, and supposedly mint versions now sell on eBay for £2,500 or more. The Horizon continued to be available at least until 2015 and you can find them on sale for around £300. But making images like these is much simpler and better with digital.
When I made these I was still working full-time as a teacher and was only able to get out and take photographs at the weekends. The City was then generally deserted and I photographed empty streets – and could set up my camera and tripod without interruption, and take my time making these pictures.
More City panoramas in a later post
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