Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
A year ago after stumbling over Jeff Bridges' web site I was severely bitten by the Widelux bug and immediatley started looking for a decent example at a fair price. An F7 popped up in the classifieds and I didn't hesitate ... the camera has a very slight banding problem but not enough to cause any real issues and ultimately if it bothers me it can be CLAd in the US quite reasonably.
One of the problems with Wideluxes is the very limited range of apertures and shutter speeds. 400 film will over expose on bright days without an ND filter and 100 will cause problems in poor light. The solution is an extra camera and I was lucky enough to stumble over an F8 at a near givaway BIN price on eBay one night ... immaculate, one owner and all the original accessories including a filter set.
I can't say enough about how good these cameras are and how much pleasure they give me when I use them ... they seriously are like nothing else and until you've experienced what a swing lens panoramic camera can do you haven't lived IMO. The aperture ranges from f2.8 to f11 and you have three shutter speeds ... 1/15 ~ 1/125 and 1/250 second. Focus is fixed at around eleven feet but at f11 everything will be in focus from around a meter up ... the lens is a 26mm and absolutely tac sharp. These things are built like tanks and have a beautiful slightly 'art deco' appearance and the only weakness is the gearing for the turret and shutter can get a bit claggy and cause banding which usually shows up in shots with large expanses of sky. A simple CLA usually addresses this problem apparently.
Panon only made these things from around 1958 to somewhere in the mid nineties before ceasing production with the final model the F8 ... and reputedly only around twenty thousand cameras were made in total during this forty year period.
I love them to bits ... thank you Panon. 🙂
One of the problems with Wideluxes is the very limited range of apertures and shutter speeds. 400 film will over expose on bright days without an ND filter and 100 will cause problems in poor light. The solution is an extra camera and I was lucky enough to stumble over an F8 at a near givaway BIN price on eBay one night ... immaculate, one owner and all the original accessories including a filter set.
I can't say enough about how good these cameras are and how much pleasure they give me when I use them ... they seriously are like nothing else and until you've experienced what a swing lens panoramic camera can do you haven't lived IMO. The aperture ranges from f2.8 to f11 and you have three shutter speeds ... 1/15 ~ 1/125 and 1/250 second. Focus is fixed at around eleven feet but at f11 everything will be in focus from around a meter up ... the lens is a 26mm and absolutely tac sharp. These things are built like tanks and have a beautiful slightly 'art deco' appearance and the only weakness is the gearing for the turret and shutter can get a bit claggy and cause banding which usually shows up in shots with large expanses of sky. A simple CLA usually addresses this problem apparently.
Panon only made these things from around 1958 to somewhere in the mid nineties before ceasing production with the final model the F8 ... and reputedly only around twenty thousand cameras were made in total during this forty year period.
I love them to bits ... thank you Panon. 🙂
