Horizon Perfekt distorion characteristics

[tkamiya]

I am playing around with my NEW Horizon Perfekt, the rotating lens, curbed film plane, pretty noisy, panoramic camera.

The camera itself is great to an extent I expected it to do but I am having hard time understanding it's distortion characteristics. Can someone help me understand this?

I know as much that I'm supposed to keep the camera horizontal and pointing level. I'm going to go shoot a brick wall but can someone who use this type of camera be so kind to summarize what's going on? What really happens when camera is horizontal, pointing up, and pointing down?

 

[David Brown]

Three pictures are worth a thousand words. Set your camera up dead level and take one photo of your brick wall. Then point it down and take one, and up and take one.

Then do the same exercise with a level horizon. (The Earth's horizon, not the camera ...)

 

[Oren Grad]

A couple of examples plucked from Flickr should give you the idea:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giulia_rossa/2853038944/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giulia_rossa/3330715717/

Browse Flicker with "horizon202" as a tag for plenty more:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/horizon202/interesting/

Pretty much anything rectilinear is going to curl in some way, whether the camera is level or not.

I picked up one of the sale-priced Perfekts too, to replace my broken Horizon 202. So I'll shortly be back to tinkering with swing-lens effects myself. Have fun!

 

[tkamiya]

I guess I'm just going have to "brick it" and see....

Yup, I picked TWO up when Perfekt went on sale a week or so ago. $249 each. NOT BAD....!

 

[thegman]

I used to have a Perfekt, I found if you keep it dead straight, distortion is really not too bad. Point it up or down, and imagine how the lens sweeps across the film plane. You'll get a very distinct curve.

On the plus side, sometimes that effect can look quite nice. Also, the lens is far better than I would have expected, and it's actually pretty sturdy too.

 

[darkosaric]

I like effects that Horizon gives inside, not landscape - but rather interiors with people, and close-ups. It gives really nice intimate atmosphere.