Very Wide Panoramas: 9:1 Aspect Ratio Project

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 developed in HC-110 (31:1 dilution B) according to Massive Dev Chart for Double-X 5222 at 200ASA. This gave me pretty good results with detail in shadows. Below are some results all with a 150mm lens about 20ft from the wall.

I really hope I can find some time to print these on paper. 16x20" paper would give a very slender 20" x 2.1" image. Interesting to see if it looks meaningful on that scale!