a proposed 35mm wide field camera

This is a project that has long been in the back of my mind, the product of too many hours spent in the shower thinking about ways to make panoramic images.

The basic idea is to remove the two lenses of the stereo camera and replace them with a single lens around the 50mm focal length, then to remove the plate that separates the two cells of the stereo image. This results in a single panoramic image about 1" x 3.75" (25mm x 95mm). This should give me an image that has a horizontal angle of view of nearly 100 degrees.

Choosing the lens (that I can afford) for this project was easily narrowed down to three, the 58mm Rodenstock Grandagon for the Graflex XL, the 65mm Super Angulon and the 47mm Super Angulon. The grandagon is a fine lens, but fairly large when compared to the tiny 65mm and 47mm Super Angulons. The 65mm lens is a favorite of mine with 4x5, but I feel that it is just a bit to long for this camera's format. So I have settled on the 47mm Schneider Super Angulon, which with an image circle if 123mm at f/16 has more than enough coverage for the expanded format proposed by this camera.

Choosing the Stereo Camera to modify was more challenging. After buying several stereo cameras on Ebay for this purpose, I have settled on the Graflex Stereo Camera primarily for the camera's physical dimensions, particularly the depth front to back.

From the film plane to the front of the existing lens panel is 44mm, which puts the focal node of a 47mm Schneider Super Angulon (which I have yet to purchase) right at 50mm, or equivalent to having the camera focused at 15 feet. Since there will be no focusing mechanism on this camera, this is exactly where I want the lens to be. The depth of focus at f/16 should fall to about infinity to 8 feet, at f/45 it should increase to infinity to about 3 feet.

The Graflex also incorporates a full length pressure plate, which is rare, since most panoramic cameras suitable for my purposes have two individual pressure plates positioned only over the original stereo camera openings.

Having settled on the Graflex camera for this project, there is one real challenge I will be facing, winding the film. On this camera the sprockets that control the counter and tracking of the film, pass straight through the center of the camera, which means they will have to be removed, or at the very least the sprockets will have to be de-clutched and the axle removed. It may very well end up that this camera will be a "wind and count" camera where the film is properly wound by counting the revolutions of the knob as it is wound

This camera is in the works. I hope to have it completed sometime in the relatively near future.