The Kodak Panoram camera was a roll-film swing-lens panoramic camera made in Rochester, New York, USA by Eastman Kodak between 1899 and 1928.
The Kodak Panoram camera was a roll-film swing-lens panoramic camera made in Rochester, New York, USA by Eastman Kodak between 1899 and 1928.
While panoramic cameras had been developed as early as Friedrich Martens' construction of his Megaskop-Kamera in 1845, [1] they became broadly accessible only in the 1890s, a major obstacle was the use of flat glass plates being incompatible with the design of such cameras (though Martens devised curved Daguerreotype plates in his camera with a rotating lens, their display is made difficult by their shape).
This technical impasse was resolved with the invention of roll film in the 1880s. Eder [2] notes that "It was not until the invention of the flexible silver bromide films that [the panoramic camera] achieved the great success which it merits. The prototype of the Kodak Panoram camera, introduced with commercial success in 1900, is easily seen at first sight. The Kodak Panoram camera permits an instantaneous exposure over an extensive field of vision by an analogous turning of the lens and by a slit shutter passing in front of the film."
It was first shown at the Exposition in Paris, 1900. [3] In the year prior to the invention of Kodak's camera, the first mass-produced American panoramic camera, the Al-Vista, was introduced in 1898. In 1907, the German Ernemann company developed a "panorama-in-the-round camera" (Panorama-Rundkamera) with a 360-degree viewing angle. [4]
The design of the Panorama was patented by Kodak Brownie designer Frank A. Brownell [5] and released as a series of models. [6] [7] [8] [9] It was about the size of a shoe-box and could be hand-held for shooting landscapes, [10] and Kodak described it as "a camera of few parts. Its operation is very simple and good pictures will be obtained from the beginning." [11]
The Panorama No.1 had a swinging Goerz Dagor lens housed in a light-proof leather tube which projected the image progressively during its scan onto flexible 120 films, [12] held against a back plate curved to match the trajectory of the lens. Focus was fixed and the camera intended to render objects sharp only if over 7m (20 feet) into the scene. [11] The swinging mechanism through which the image was transmitted by a rear slit, and with the lens tube not pointing at the film at either end of its travel; were mechanisms that constituted the shutter, which had two settings; "fast" and "slow", the latter being used for most situations except for "views at the seashore, on the water, and for very distant views when the sunlight is unusually bright." [11]
A fold-down door covered the lens when not in use, except on Model 4. The framing was achieved using a brilliant finder mounted centrally on the top-front edge - some with a cover providing a mirror for eye-level use, supplemented by V-shaped sighting lines across the top of the camera. A spirit level at the viewfinder aligned the shot with the horizon line. The No.1 captured 120º field of view, and produced negatives [13] 5.71 cm H x 17.78 cm W . [14] Model 3A used the 6-exposure 122-sizedfilm roll for 3 shots and the 10-exposure roll for 5. The No.4 encompassed 142º on size 103 negatives, [15] each frame being 8.89 cm H x 30.48 cm W. [16]
At the turn of the century Fred E. Munsey & Co in Los Angeles was advertising Panoram models at US$8 and US$26 for No.1 and No.4 Panoram models respectively (equivalent to about $252.26 and $819.86 in 2021); [17] little more expensive than the Folding Pocket Kodaks. In the United Kingdom in 1913 "Universal Providers" William Whitely Ltd., of Queens Rd in London offered the No.1 model at £2 10 0, and the No.4 £3 10 0 (£297.40 in 2020) and described the camera;
Takes marvelously realistic pictures of broad stretches of landscape and seascape, open spaces in cities, squares. etc. Large groups of people, reviews, regattas, etc.. are all most vividly recorded by the Panoram Kodak. When held vertically, most artistic panel pictures are obtainable, such as waterfalls, and mountains. etc. Simplicity itself. Loaded and Unloaded in Daylight. [18]
Being portable and simple in operation, with the added advantage of storing a number of panoramas on a film roll, the Panoram was quickly taken up by innovative photographers for both recording and artistic purposes.
Charles J. Kleingrothe's turn-of-the-century photographs of Sumatran Dutch East Indies were made with the Panoram, and are considered key visual records of colonial Peninsular Malaya, especially of its tin-mining and rubber industries. [19] Anthony Fiala (1869-1950) depicted the 1901 Baldwin Ziegler Expedition and Ziegler Polar Expedition of 1903-5 efforts to be the first to reach the North Pole; his images are taken with large format still cameras and the then new Kodak No. 1 Panoram camera. [20] [21]
The Finn, Alexander Ivanovitch Iyas, the Tsar's consul in Persia 1901–1914, photographed the region, and on 26 February 1904 used the Panoram to photograph the arrival of the Carnegie Institute Expedition to Eastern Persia. He was shot and beheaded in an attack by Turkish troops on 29 December 1914 and by coincidence, at the battle of Sufyan, on a fallen Turkish officer were found Iyas's negatives, which were sent to Iyas's mother. In 1915 Vladimir Minorsky organised a small exhibition of his photographs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in St Petersburg. His work remained forgotten for a century. [22]
The panoramic camera was used in the 1921 reconnaissance of Mount Everest; [23] also by Pictorialist and postcard publisher Robert Vere Scott; and by adventurers like Melvin Vaniman, and archaeologist Hiram Bingham III. [24] Bingham, having first seen Machu Picchu in 1911, for his 1912 expedition wrote to George Eastman, who was to supply his photographic equipment;
...it would be extremely advisable to have one Panoram Kodak in the outfit ... Can you give me some advice on this? ... In many of the deep canyons where we are expecting to work, it needs a Panoram Kodak to show the opposite side of the mountain up to the top .... If you can give us three new 3A Specials, and one No. 4 Panoram we shall have nine Kodaks in the outfit and ought to be well equipped for the scientific work that lies ahead of us. [25]
In World War I, Ernest Brooks and Canadian official war photographer, the Daily Mirror photojournalist William Rider-Rider both used the Panoram No.4. [26] [27] Even at mid-century the Panoram was being used; Josef Sudek started photographing with it in 1948 after being given one as a gift from friends, and commissioned by Jan Řesáč to photograph Prague for a book, he produced his one of his most famous publications, Praha panoramaticka ("Prague Panoramic"), devoted to the format, though it was not published until 1959. [28]
35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on film, 35 mm is the most commonly used gauge. The name of the gauge is not a direct measurement, and refers to the nominal width of the 35 mm format photographic film, which consists of strips 1.377 ± 0.001 inches (34.976 ± 0.025 mm) wide. The standard image exposure length on 35 mm for movies is four perforations per frame along both edges, which results in 16 frames per foot of film.
The following list comprises significant milestones in the development of photography technology.
George Eastman was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry.
135 film, more popularly referred to as 35 mm film or 35 mm, is a format of photographic film with a film gauge of 35 mm (1.4 in) loaded into a standardized type of magazine for use in 135 film cameras.
Advanced Photo System (APS) is a discontinued film format for still photography first produced in 1996. It was marketed by Eastman Kodak under the brand name Advantix, by FujiFilm under the name Nexia, by Agfa under the name Futura and by Konica as Centuria.
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was coined in the 18th century by the English painter Robert Barker to describe his panoramic paintings of Edinburgh and London. The motion-picture term panning is derived from panorama.
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Josef Sudek was a Czech photographer, best known for his photographs of Prague.
Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio, like the familiar letterbox format in wide-screen video.
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In infrared photography, the photographic film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about 900 nm. Film is usually sensitive to visible light too, so an infrared-passing filter is used; this lets infrared (IR) light pass through to the camera, but blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum; these filters thus look black (opaque) or deep red.
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The Harris shutter is a device attached to a camera to create three nearly-identical exposures, with three color filters, each exposed in succession. The device, and its consequent effect, were invented by Robert S. Harris of Kodak. The term Harris shutter is also applied to the technique or effect.
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The Cirkut is a rotating panoramic camera of the type known as "full rotation". It was patented by William J. Johnston in 1904 and manufactured by Rochester Panoramic Camera Company starting in 1905; during that same year, the company was acquired by Century Camera Co.. The manufacture of the camera continued through 1949.
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The practice and appreciation of photographyin the United States began in the 19th century, when various advances in the development of photography took place and after daguerreotype photography was introduced in France in 1839. The earliest commercialization of photography was made in the country when Alexander Walcott and John Johnson opened the first commercial portrait gallery in 1840. In 1866, the first color photograph was taken. Only in the 1880s, would photography expand to a mass audience with the first easy-to-use, lightweight Kodak camera, issued by George Eastman and his company.
Robert Vere Scott (1877, Brisbane –c.1944 United States of America) was an Australian Pictorialist photographer known for his panoramic views. From 1918 he lived and worked in the United States, where he died sometime in the 1940s.
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