At the Beach with the Horizon Perfekt

A while ago, the ICP Infinity Awards put together a piece about Jeff Bridges and his Widelux Camera.  The Widelux was produced in Japan from around the 1950s to around the 1990s, and The Dude carried his with him on set.  The above shot was taken on my Horizon Perfekt, which works exactly the same way -- the main differences being the hideous molded plastic body, a 120 degree FOV (instead of 140), and maybe some different shutter settings.  Oh, also, it's made in Russia.

The way it works is pretty neat.  There's a barrel on the front of the camera that houses a little f/2.8 lens. When you hit the shutter, it sweeps across the frame.  You actually have to kind of pinch the camera at the top and bottom to hold it; if you try to hold it like a regular camera, you risk getting your fingers in the shot. There's actually a little bubble level in the viewfinder because if you don't have it level, your horizon gets really weird and bowed.  There's no actual shutter per se.  When you set the shutter speed, it just varies the width of the strip being exposed.

Aside from the actual shutter speeds, there are two modes you can set this to -- fast and slow.  In fast mode, the lens snaps from one side to the other.  In slow mode, it takes about 3 seconds.  You can either put it on a tripod, or you can just hand hold it and make some cool stuff happen in the dark.  As Jeff Bridges mentions in the video, you can handhold this camera at 1/15s on slow mode, because only a small strip of film is being exposed at any given time.

Inside the camera, the film travels along a curved path that keeps it the same distance from the lens all through the arc.  This is how it stays nice and tidy from corner to corner without having to worry about aberrations or anything.

Here's what the developed frames look like.  They're almost twice the size of full 35mm frames.  As you can see, sometimes the film advance has issues and you get slightly overlapping frames.

Anyway, while taking pictures, I actually managed to break the film inside the camera.  I tried to advance the film and I didn't realize my thumb was on the rewind knob on the left, so the film snapped and the day was over.  I had to get home to the darkroom to unload the stuff that I did manage to take and develop it.  There were some shots I really wanted, too, but didn't make it.  Anyway, here's some of what I managed to rescue:

Now, the last thing I want is for this to turn into a gear review blog.  You'll notice I've been really careful about getting really into specs and image quality.  I really want to just focus on all the different ways there are to take and make a photo.  All through photography's history, people have been coming up with weird and zany ways of capturing light, and they don't always end up with the sharpest photo.  

The reason I shoot film is that it makes exploring all these ways a lot more affordable.  That's not to say that I'm really saving a lot of money, per se.  Every dollar I'm not spending on a digital sensor is going towards another kooky camera. 

And, yeah... I've been spending a lot of dollars.