Israel as Panorama

I think I already wrote it several times. I love the photos taken with my large format panorama camera but I hate carrying it around. Especially hauling it through the heat of the desert is good fun.

Anyway, loading a film into the Noblex 150U is easy compared to its 35mm little sister where fiddling with the film guides can easily result in failure. Keeping the camera straight is already harder. The level seen in the finder only shows the horizontal alignment. I sometimes look on top of the camera before I take the imagine how far I’m off vertically.

The camera performs quite well in tight spaces. The same picture taken with an ultra wide angle lens might just collapse in the image. The rotating 50mm lens just keeps everything at the right place and creates a feeling of spaciousness.

And there are the widen open spaces that seem to flow from foreground to the horizon opening an angle beyond your vision.

The camera was probably developed to be exclusively used on a tripod. However, it’s really fun to use it handheld in urban places. I would recommend either to use a fast film or shooting in bright daylight since only shutter speeds of 1/125s and 1/250s and Aperture of 8 and above secure good results.

Holding 1/125s in the hand isn’t an issue at all. 1/60s seems possible but feels long. And why ruining one of 6 images on a roll. Of course, apertures below f8 can be chosen. However, the reduced depth of field leads to sharpness loss in the foreground which isn’t really pleasing for the eye.

Something funny before closing the entry: it seems people don’t bother much about this huge camera. I wonder if they even think it’s a camera at all. It’s like The 2m tall guy with a 5kg camera isn’t existing at all.

All images are taken on Fomapan 100 and developed in Spur HCD.