Thinking of building a Frankenpanrealist

So here’s the concept: take one Stereo Realist. Remove lens and shutter assemblies. Enlarge camera interior opening to make one Looooong negative. Attach scale focusing Mount to front with Compur shutter and 80mm or so lens. Should make a 20 perf long negative. The rangefinder would still work. Crazy or workable? ;-)

How will you calibrate the RF for the new lens?

Aftermarket helical?

I went down this road a few years back and gave up. There was too much involved and in particular film advance, which should have been the easiest thing , was a nightmare. I suppose that I might have been making mistakes no one else would, but it was not encouraging. Those old swing-lens Krasnogorsk FT3's (is that the right model number) aren't that expensive and are a lot more compact anyway.

I actually bought what was meant to be a beat up realist recently with this in mind. Unforunately it turned out, after a bit of disassembly and lubing/cleaning/reassembly, to be a realist in good working order, so I'm loathe to tear it apart now. Like you I was attracted to the notion of the built in RF, if only for reading off distance, as the mechanism inside the camera that moves the film plane would not have survived the conversion. However, looking at it, and doing a bit of disassembly during the course of the CLA, convinced me it would not be a good candidate for a pan conversion anyhow. As nosmok points out, the advance is a bit awkward, the mechanism that holds the advance wheel sticks down into the film area in the middle (not a problem for stereo, would be a problem in the pan case. You could probably move the attachment up into the top plate somehow.

Anyhow, I ended up gutting an old broken Yashica Electro and milling out the film gate. Waiting for an m65 mount & copal 0 plate from rafcamera and some other bits and pieces.

That fellow Ethan Moses (Cameradactyl) has designed files for a 3D printed 35mm pano, 24X58mm frame size, that might be more practical, if you can source the 65mm Mamiya Press lens it’s designed for.

ciniframe said:

That fellow Ethan Moses (Cameradactyl) has designed files for a 3D printed 35mm pano, 24X58mm frame size, that might be more practical, if you can source the 65mm Mamiya Press lens it’s designed for.

Click to expand...

Sigh.

A 38/4.5 Biogon mounted on a humble Century (or less humble 2x3 Crown) Graphic will give a 24x82 (perhaps a hair shorter) strip on 120 film. That's what you want, Ray.

How about a cheap and readily available adapter for running 35mm film in a 120 camera? That gives you the choice of 45mm, 60mm, or 90mm pans (without even going into the weird sizes). I got one of these for a pittance a while back on the EAS. Haven't used it yet as I'm not a big panoramic fan.

thuggins said:

How about a cheap and readily available adapter for running 35mm film in a 120 camera? That gives you the choice of 45mm, 60mm, or 90mm pans (without even going into the weird sizes). I got one of these for a pittance a while back on the EAS. Haven't used it yet as I'm not a big panoramic fan.

Click to expand...

Nominal 6x9 is usually around 82 mm long, as I hinted at in post #7 above.