Horizon Perfekt (swing lens panoramic film camera)

DavidTO

A little over a week ago I fell in love with the images in Jeff Bridge's The Making of True Grit. The images were so wide screen. And not in the same way that panoramas are that we shoot now in digital and stitch together. You couldn't shoot people like that, not easily, anyway. We could crop, but I don't know many shooters who really think that way: cropping to pano. Anyway, part of the beauty of the look is the film its shot on.

I had never heard of the Widelux or a swing lens type camera. Within an hour I had determined that the Widelux is too hard to get my hands on and found the Horizon Perfekt and ordered it next day delivery from Amazon. It's got a 28mm f2.8 lens that swings to cover 120°.

That was last Friday. The very next day I was up at Samy's in Santa Barbara getting the kit I needed to process black and white film in my bathroom, and headed out to Ellwood in Goleta (where I shot these infrareds).

I had a some growing pains with the camera. The frames are nearly double the width of a standard 35mm frame, so the frame advance has to throw the film twice as far. First roll in the camera I cranked too hard at the end of the roll and tore it. Had to break it open in the changing bag, and etc. etc. etc.

I shot two rolls that day, but I'm only posting images of the first (the one that broke) today. I bought a scanner to get the images off film and into the digital world, but I really hated the scanner. I'm pursuing another option, and I'll be posting whole other thread on that (1970's technology!).

Anyway, that's my lengthy explanation and my excuse for how many flaws these images have. I really don't quite want to show them, but I do want to share my learning curve with y'all.

So, there are lightleaks, and/or lightbouncing in these images (I think a little bit of both, and I need to figure out how to minimize it and reduce my own errors that made it worse), they're dirty (I was just testing the scanner, after all, and I was having a lot of trouble just getting the scan going), and it's all just me testing the camera, the process, and learning along the way.

So, with all those excuses out of the way, without further ado, my first foray into film in decades:


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Andy

So cool. I think about doing film again from time to time, but then I go have a nice glass of Zin and think about something else

WTG, Dave!

BradfordBenn

Very cool. I like the texture of the images and that they are not perfect. Did you do any processing after the scan? Also did you scan the negatives or the prints? More just curious about the process. But very cool

DavidTO

Thanks, guys!

Brad, I cropped, rotated and applied an autotone in Lightroom only. Well, and on a couple I played around with using gradient filters to reduce the flaring. But I did little.

Mostly this scan was just seeing how the scanner worked, so I didn't even really make sure the negs were clean. I scanned them all in one pass, but the scanner is so slow and the software is so frustrating that I just sent it back to Amazon.

Oh, and yes, I scanned the negs. The whole point of this (for me) is to do it all myself. Process the film, get in the computer without having any help. And I've not built a darkroom. Plus you're always better off scanning the original negs, anyway.

I'm really excited about the next phase, which starts next weekend, after I get the next piece in my hybrid darkroom.

schmoo

Again, you're a brave soul for taking the scanning into your own hands

I love the uneven look of this, though I understand wanting to get it "clean" to be sure that you can.

I'm curious about what this camera is like in action!

DavidTO

My journey continues...


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Getting better! Still a long way to go. The camera has fixed focus, so if you want to have any hope of focussing at less than 9 feet you'd better be shooting at f16.

For instance, this is 5.6 at 1/2 second, I believe. It's soft focus and of course at 1/2 second I got some motion blur.

DavidTO

Some more around my work.

The Cinerama Dome:




Chipotle:





The lunch line at work:

DavidTO

On a recent trip to Morro Bay.



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5 (wish this one were color so the people would stand out more)



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7 (I had an issue with another roll touching this one while drying, hence the marks. I could remove, but haven't yet.)



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Andy

DavidTO wrote: »

DavidTO

I finally got some color through this thing. I had the negatives processed at CVS and then used my slide copier to get them in the computer. Color is a lot harder than black and white, that's for sure!


Schwab's, Hollywood (closed years ago, but the sign remains, for some reason)



Floyd's, the hip barber. Walking away from taking this shot, I was already regretting the composition. I was so close to getting both sides of the corner it was on (on the left of the frame). Would have been cooler, I think



Shooting with friends at Carrizo Plain. This shot was taken while I was trying to get my bulb remote to work. I like the candid quality of it.

DavidTO

Some from last week:

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rideswithchuck

How do you scan your negatives?
I've been photo stitching a long time. I took a step backwards last week and bought a used Perfekt camera. Getting the film processed is still easy but how have you been scanning your negatives? I just picked up a Canon scanner that is supposed to scan 35mm but these long panorama images threw it for a loop. Any advice? Thanks.

DavidTO

rideswithchuck wrote: »

I've been photo stitching a long time. I took a step backwards last week and bought a used Perfekt camera. Getting the film processed is still easy but how have you been scanning your negatives? I just picked up a Canon scanner that is supposed to scan 35mm but these long panorama images threw it for a loop. Any advice? Thanks.

I had the same frustration. I ended up getting a slide scanner, which I talk about in this thread.

DavidTO

I sure hope you're going to post some pics once you get it going! Feel free to post in this thread, or make your own if you wish. I won't consider it a hijack if you join in here, though!