Originally posted by Silent Street 
Welcome to Pentaxland.
8x36 inches!!? By the Lord Harry. I imagine the prints would be astounding, but what was the camera's name...."Panorama"??
Bob Gray was shooting with his father's equipment. His father shot some of the pioneering California photographs, including the installation of the Mt. Wilson telescope.
The panarama camera held a role of 8 inch film and moved the film to track the moving image. The camera sat on a wooden tripod that had a large brass gear around the top, about 12 inch diameter. The camera had a pivot at the center of the gear and a drive gear that engaged the 12 inch tripod gear. The drive gear could be swapped to different sizes to adjust the speed. A slit in front of the film plane adjusted the exposure time, since the moving film was in front of the slit for a finite time. They quit making 8 inch film while I worked there. So we had to buy rolls of 10 inch film and cut it to 8 inch in the dark room. A 10 inch by 500 foot roll of film is expensive. We would shoot shots, using up 3 feet each, to get a group of campers who had come to Idyllwild for the week.
The contact prints were made on a plywood box that had a row of light bulbs inside and a glass top with a replaceable light tight cover to hold the paper down. The paper came in rolls too.
The panarams were shot over sufficient angle that the light differed across the shot, so we would adjust the exposure by swapping some 40 Watt bulbs in row for 60 Watt bulbs. Large developing tanks, stop bath and washers were following by laying the prints on a tin with blotter paper and rolling these through a press to squeeze out the water, before we laid them out on dryer racks.
Post #15 by weverka
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