MorseBlog

In my last blog post I detailed spooling 35mm film onto 120 film backing paper to achieve a 5:1 aspect ratio panorama. In this one I used the same technique with 16mm film to get an even wider aspect ratio of 9:1. In this case I used some black and white movie film from Kodak called Double-X 7222. I used it in my Minolta spy camera which I discussed in a past post . It is a 200-250 ASA black and white film. I have a small spool of it in my freezer. I exposed it at 200 ASA (also bracket +/-1 stop but box speed seemed best.) I made some test exposures on a bittery cold and windy day. I decided to stay out of the wind and chose as a subject an old quarry wall. It was in a sheltered forested valley so wind was not an issue. I did find that it was getting quite dark. The light made focus difficult. I ended up metering between 3 and 5 Ev. This gave 1 minute at f32. I didn't have reciprocity data for this film so I used TMAX 100/400 values which indicated 1' 24".   I deve...

I really enjoy my Fuji G617 camera where I get a 6x17cm image for a 3:1 image ratio. I have recently bought a 6x12 film back for my 4x5 Intrepid camera though this is only 2:1 aspect ratio. Since I bought the G617 I have toyed with idea of putting 35mm film into it. My idea was to tape the film to some old backing paper and re-spooling it and loading it into the camera. There are some challenges however. 35mm film has a 24mm wide image area between the sprocket holes. With my 6x12 back this is 120/24mm or 5:1 aspect ratio. If I load into my Fuji G617 I get to 7: I could crop from 120 film of course and this may be the best answer. I do have a bulk roll of FP4+ so it could be cheaper. An extreme thought is to break out my roll of 16mm film and use that. That would give 7.5:1 and 10.5:1 aspect ratios. I suspect this would be extremely difficult to compose with little margin for error in terms of level horizon. I started by using an expired 120 film for comparison and measurement...