How we stopped Interstate Commerce on US95 for 10 minutes...

I thought perhaps the folks here might enjoy a panorama done exactly as it would have been accomplished 100 years ago. Here's a link to 598.5 Square inches of gorgeous negative done in beautiful downtown Tonopah, NV.


The neg was made on 9.5 inch Aerial Recon Tri-X film with the #10 Cirkut camera. I had a stainless steel tray made that just fits in my 8 foot sink for developing the big film. No more streaks from un-even developing but of course a few other artifacts to prove we didn't do it with the D200!

On the big white building at the far right is a historic plaque behind the gentleman's head. In the original negative the lettering is quite readable. I am startled at how sharp the negative is. I used the Gundlach Turner Reich 10 1/2" #4. Not original to this camera, but the same as what it was originally sold with so it works well with the kit gearing. FUN!

talk about fun Thanks for sharing!

Bonjour Jim
amazing! yes I guess it was fun or were you stressed by all this guys waiting for you.
How did you manage not to have a car seenable?
That's quite a large negative how did you scan it?
Any chance to have a 100% crop of these letters on the white building?
Would you share with us a pic of the camera itself?

Thanks for sharing AND doing it

Nicolas Claris said:

Bonjour Jim
amazing! yes I guess it was fun or were you stressed by all this guys waiting for you.
How did you manage not to have a car seenable?
That's quite a large negative how did you scan it?
Any chance to have a 100% crop of these letters on the white building?
Would you share with us a pic of the camera itself?

Thanks for sharing AND doing it

Click to expand...

Hi Nicolas. Thanks. Yes, it was very stressful because the police have stopped the traffic on a busy main highway while I did this. I knew I must be done in short minutes and this monster is no point and shoot. The camera sit up on top of a very large tripod that has a round platform table about half meter wide. The platform rotates on an axis. The camera has a spring wound motor and a gear drive that drives it around the platform while the roll film is pulled past a small slit at the same speed. So the image is 'painted' on to the film while the camera is moving. Quite the machine. And then the bigger stress comes because 76 people think you've made a good picture but there is a million ways to spoil it in the development etc.

So the cars were held by the Police. You can see them down the main highway a ways waiting for me.

I did the scans simply on a large Epson Flat bed. It took 8 scans and I stitched them back together in PS CS3.

Many of the folks were photographing me. I need to get a snapshot of the camera with me doing the shot from some of the folks who were there. I'll post here when I do. Let me look for the scan of the lettering. I scanned that 24X36mm area at 1200 dpi and I have it somewhere.

Here is a good shot of the camera.

Hi Jim

That's great. How did you scan it and how are you planning ion printing it - contact presumably - but have you got a paper source?

Mike

Mike Shimwell said:

Hi Jim

That's great. How did you scan it and how are you planning ion printing it - contact presumably - but have you got a paper source?

Mike

Click to expand...

Hi Mike. Printing is where I draw the line in the sand. I have a good 300dpi scan and my plan is to have it printed at 1:1 size by someone else. Any thoughts on who might be a good value to do that? When I get that figured out I'll let folks order them direct from whoever is printing them.

I DO have some roll paper and could do wet darkroom prints but...............that's another whole hobby in itself. Who has the time. My hat's off to the guys that did these every day 90 years ago.

Jim Galli said:

I thought perhaps the folks here might enjoy a panorama done exactly as it would have been accomplished 100 years ago.

Click to expand...

Hi Jim,

Thanks for sharing. I certainly enjoyed it.

Bart

Hi Jim,

This is an exciting work of the heart, mind and careful hands. It should print perfectly well on roll paper from your printer. I'm impressed that you got the old camera to work in the first place. Presumably the gears are such that the camera rotation and film drive are exactly matched. Did you have to repair anything or it just "worked".

What were the trade-offs between film speed and shutter speed?

Thanks for the very special and impressive pano!

Asher

Hi Asher.

My Cirkut is unrestored original and in very good shape. The most I've done is to clean the rollers on the platform so it spins as freely as possible. It has a good strong motor and just wants to GO! There is a lever on the side that controls a ball governor for speed. It's marked in increments from 1/10th second to 1/25th which doesn't sound like much to us but if you think about it, that's over 2X the rotational speed to accomplish even that spread. In 1/25th it really takes off. I used 1/15th for this and the Tri-X at 320 asa is a gift the early guys did not have. It allows me to stop down to about f45 1/2 which was really needed for the near to far depth. The folks are only 25 - 30 feet away.

Gears; Each has a number that corresponds with teeth that engage the drive. So you have a 63, 64, and 65 for the 10 3/4" lens and if focused at infinity you use 65, 80 feet, 64, and 25 feet 63. The teeth correspond exactly to how fast the film is going past the slit at any given focus distance away from the lens.

Jim Galli said:

Hi Mike. Printing is where I draw the line in the sand. I have a good 300dpi scan and my plan is to have it printed at 1:1 size by someone else. Any thoughts on who might be a good value to do that? When I get that figured out I'll let folks order them direct from whoever is printing them.

I DO have some roll paper and could do wet darkroom prints but...............that's another whole hobby in itself. Who has the time. My hat's off to the guys that did these every day 90 years ago.

Click to expand...

Hi Jim

I'd be happy to run a few off my HP - if you've a good 300dpi or better scan then it would be easy enough for me to do - but I'm in the UK so postage may be an issue for your folks. If you get stuck though, PM me.

Great project, but developing darkroom prints could be a bit time consuming, as well as fraught with problems to overcome.


Mike

Mike Shimwell said:

Hi Jim

I'd be happy to run a few off my HP - if you've a good 300dpi or better scan then it would be easy enough for me to do - but I'm in the UK so postage may be an issue for your folks. If you get stuck though, PM me.

Great project, but developing darkroom prints could be a bit time consuming, as well as fraught with problems to overcome.


Mike

Click to expand...

Thanks Mike. That brings up another issue / idea. My Epson 2200 isn't up to the task but my R2400 I have at work would get them done OK. I'm thinking I could upgrade my home printer and maybe just fill these orders myself. I might be able to pay for the printer that way. Which one should I buy? I don't keep up with the technology, but which one would work well for doing black and white to fine standards? Maybe I'll start another thread with this querry? Asher?

Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

What were the trade-offs between film speed and shutter speed?

Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by "trade-offs".

The exposure time is given by:

t = w/v

where t is the exposure time in seconds, w is the width of the slit in the camera back, and v is the velocity of the film across the slit (w and v having the same unit of distance, and t and v having the same unit of time).

Jim can probably provide us with some actual numbers for those parameters.

Wonderful work, Jim.