Building a poor-man's X-Pan lenses?

Hello, fellows!


I tried a few different searches and didn’t find any answers.

I am planning on building a panoramic camera that uses 35mm film. Image format should be 24x72mm, as I will be using a Belplasca Stereo body and I will advance the film twice after each shot, so why lose film, right?

I am looking for a light and compact wide angle lens that gives an image circle of 76mm. I am thinking something between 45 and 55 mm focal length.

The most obvious candidates are very expensive and/or are big/heavy. I don’t want to spend big bucks on the lens, as the Belplasca body probably won’t benefit from top brand glass… or am I wrong?

So, do any of you have an idea about what lens I can use? It can be a folder or TLRtt lens, Soviet-era glass, whatever…


Cheers!

I have worked on building such a camera by cutting away part of the film gate of a 35mm SLR. And removing the shutter. (This is sort of similar to other semi commercial projects, but my idea has some differences/simplifications because I don't have a machine shop, etc.) My project's not done but I can say a few things:

- You didn't mention a shutter, but you almost certainly need a lens in shutter, assuming the Belplasca is like other stereo cameras and has two small shutters that you'll remove. Unless you only want to take time exposures. This limits your choices.

- A lens that covers 6x6 should have enough coverage for 24x72mm.

- General challenges will be mounting the lens, focusing mount, parallelism of lens to film plane, and flatness of film. I don't know if the Belplasca is going to be particularly bad at this. It's really up to the parts that you're going to make.

- So anyway, you need a wide angle lens that covers 6x6 and is in shutter. This narrows your choices; they're mostly re-purposing wide angle lenses from some medium format system camera. Former-Soviet SLR lenses typically aren't in shutter. Inexpensive lenses from folding cameras and fixed-lens TLRs aren't wide angle. Wide angles lenses for MF were never an amateur photographer's item, so there isn't a giant supply of them lurking out there. Mamiya TLR wide lenses (55mm or 65mm) are a possible candidate. The 47mm or 65mm Super Angulon is possible, although not exactly inexpensive. It is said to possible to remove a Bronica SQ lens from its mount and put it in a Copal shutter, again not exactly cheap and also requires some work. There are some other MF system lenses and so on.

Hmm. Light. Compact. 50 mm +/- focal length. Never mind about inexpensive, I think you've defined an empty set.

You left out a requirement. In shutter.

Lenses that might do. 45/4.5 Apo-Grandagon, 47/8 and 47/5.6 Super Angulon. 50/6.3 Mamiya for the Universal. 53/4 Super Angulon. 53/4.5 Biogon. 55/4.5 Apo-Grandagon. If you want to go a little longer, 58/5.6 Konica Hexanon for Koni Omega/Omegaflex; this will have to be reshuttered in a normal #0.

You might want to look at https://archive.org/details/short-lenses-for-2x-3-cameras. That list excludes the 55/4.5 Mamiya for Mamiya TLRs because it doesn't cover 2x3.

To reddesert's comments about the, um, mechanics, well, you might give up on converting a stereo camera into a roll holder and look into using a 2x3 (6x9 in metric) press camera such as the Century Graphic and using 120 film. You'll get ground glass focusing, so better control of composition, and better cropping opportunities.

Wilco Jensen created a Frankenxpan using two Nikon. I forgot which lens he used but it wasn't a big monster. I think it's an one-off project for him but maybe worth it to ask him.

This might be a good starting point

Thanks all of you for the suggestions and links. Yes, I forgot to mention that a shutter was needed.

My best bet seems to be the 55mm for Mamiya C TLR’s. If I could find only the taking lens, it would be perfect.

It appears that the Belplasca is a 7p stereo camera. Those usually have a alternating 7p/20p film advance which would waste a lot of film on a panoramic mod. The 5p stereos have a 10p film advance which would be preferred. You would wind twice with those.

In addition, there is not enough room between the stereo frames for a 72mm picture. But you can always just open up the gate and deal with the coverage of the lens since you are limited by the advance mechanism anyway.

I modded a Wirgin stereo with a 47/5.6 Super-Angulon. It covers the 94mm gate. The 47/8 is much smaller and would be easier to adapt.

Other potential lenses are the Bronica ETR and Fuji GS645 lenses. They fit in #0 and #00 shutters respectively but are nominally for 645 format.

Thanks, @OAPOli! The Belplasca has a space of one photogram between the two images it takes. I am going to take a better look at the winding mechanism anyway.