I’ve had an idea for a small project for a while, I wanted to shoot some 500T in a panoramic format during the night around here in my hometown.
But I could never get it to work in my Mamiya 6 MF without the adapter, which is now very very expensive of course. The XPan is incredibly overpriced currently and so is that Fuji version of it, the TX-1/TX-2.
But after doing my review of the Mamiya Press I had a brainwave. This old beast lacks all interlocks and things that make using 35mm in a Medium format camera difficult. Also, it is 6x9 which gives even more panoramic aspect ratio.
After struggling for a long while to get the film loaded and spooled up in a 120 roll, I went out and shot the roll only to find out when I got back home that the 35mm leader had gotten loose so I had just shot all the frames on the same frame. On the second try I got it to actually wind the film, and off I went.
So to get the correct length between frames you need to have something to increase the thickness of the 120 roll you wind the 35mm onto, since the film back is counting on a certain amount of paper being there when you start shooting, and also that the roll gets thicker as you go along.
After 8 shots, you’re on your own, and just try to wind an amount that feels reasonable. I didn’t wind enough, and ended up with a bunch of half frame double exposures.
Alas, it is now May, and up here in the north we are going into the midnight sun season. We don’t really have darkness anymore at night, maybe for an hour somewhere around 2am.. but my plan of shooting some long exposures with 500T will have to wait until autumn comes. But I shot the roll anyway during daytime, to get a feel of what kind of images I could expect. And there is a certain, je ne ce quoi, with this wildly wide aspect ratio. Composing is hit and miss, and you have to be perfectly level when shooting, otherwise you will lose a bunch of negative when straightening up the image in post.
Alright, enough writing, here are the sample pics from that roll. Now you at least know it can be done, if you’re interested in wide panoramic hacks yourself!
Oh yeah, and the roll was developed in ECN2, as per usual. Don’t ruin nice Vision3 film in C41 please..
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