CubePan 135 Panoramic System

Darryl Roberts

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Re: Chroma CubePan

Hi, I'm intrigued by this, I've been looking into panoramic options. This one says it can shoot 24 x 72mm on 35mm film.

Questions
  1. Do you have any insight on this beyond what is on the Web site?
  2. Would I be able to print 1 by 3-foot sharp photographs?
Advanced thank you.

Darryl
 

MTGseattle

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So, It's a 3d printed Xpan option? Or at least Xpan-ish? This could be cool since Xpan II's are trading in the $5k neighborhood these days.

We need a user to chime in with actual experience regarding negative sharpness (which lens achieved it). Part of your question #2 would also depend upon your darkroom setup or digital printer capabilities. I know I can't knock out an acceptable 1x3 foot fiber print in my current situation.
 

grahamp

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That's a 12x magnification of 35mm frame. If you cannot do that magnification from 35mm film to your satisfaction, then the camera won't work for you.

It seems to be a film advance box with a dark slide that mounts shuttered medium format lenses. You need to source a suitable lens unit in addition to the camera and (possibly) cone mounting. That' is probably an extra 50% on the cost unless you have a suitable candidate lens and shutter on hand.

There are other options for panoramic cameras. 6x9 or 6x12 roll film backs on a 4x5 fixed lens camera, with a little cropping, will give you the same ratio.

Then there are things like the Horizont rotating lens cameras that will give 24x118, though the image effects are slightly different.

What is your use case?
 

mshchem

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Buy a Fuji 6x9 or a 4x5 Crown Graphic. Seriously, I would not waste good money on something like that.
 

OAPOli

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Hard to answer question 2 because no lens is supplied with the camera. Regarding question 1. To make the most of 3D-printed cameras one would ideally want to collimate the lens and check/adjust film plane to lens mount parallelism. Also keep in mind that aside from the Mamiya Press lenses, you have no focus scale and would need to make your own.
 

250swb

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I've got a couple of Chroma cameras and they are pretty good well thought out designs. Many people have a Copal mount (or similar) large format lens lying around and it's a great idea to be able to re-purpose it in a format that would otherwise cost thousands to get into. I can't vouch for the CubePan but with my medium format cameras I've had no light leaks or similar annoyances that come to mind when people mention plastic cameras.
 

reddesert

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I don't have any experience with this camera. It looks interesting if a bit pricey for a special-use camera body. The Chroma people seem to have a good reputation but I think that adapting a lens to a 3D printed camera is something where the user should be comfortable with tinkering, focus testing, testing for parallelism of lens to film, etc.

Often when oddballs like this come up, someone will point out that you could shoot 6x9 with similar lenses, or run 35mm with 35mm-120 adapters in a Fuji 690 or Mamiya Press or 2x3 or 4x5 Graphic, etc. That's all fine and probably what I would do, since I already have some of those things, but there are real usability issues there too. Those are large cameras, and if you're trying to run 35mm with adapters, there is no rewind knob. The Chroma has a rewind knob.
 

OAPOli

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The camera bodies are printed using the sintering process. Those machines aren't the desktop FDM type so the prints are likely contracted out. In my experience it is quite expensive.
 

RJ Arts

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I have communicated with Steve Lloyd regarding other cameras and other users who owned the chroma camera. My conclusion is the build quality is top notch. I m considering myself to buy this.
 
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