Panoramic Photography

While attending Emerson College in Boston in the early 90s, I got some days as background on an action film shooting around Boston in 1993. The film starred Jeff Bridges and we actually got to talk cameras during exterior shooting at MIT. He shot a Widelux camera on this film, as he had for a long time.

Father & son in Boston in 1994 as shot by Jeff on his Widelux, which was a gift from his wife.

Jeff can explain the camera better than I can. It’s high risk, high reward, and totally worth it.

As for BLOWN AWAY…it’s fun. There are some fairly suspect Boston accents, but what the film lacks in dialogue coaches it more than makes up for in pyro technicians. The reason to put your ass in the seat was the explosions. Including the climatic one on a derelict ship that blew out over 7000 windows in Southie and triggered a massive insurance payout.

We didn’t fucking have CGI back then. We enjoyed our explosions the old fashioned way. Photo: Mark Garfinkel.

I had no idea Bridges was a photographer, and by coincidence I was also shooting panoramic film on BLOWN AWAY, too. I didn’t have a Widelux like Jeff, but at that time Kodak sold disposable panoramic cameras, so I bought a couple and saved one for my shoot days on the movie. (Which also gave me points to my Screen Actors Guild membership.) A few photos from my weird, disposable Kodak.

Copley Square in summer of ‘93. Shot on a disposable Kodak panoramic camera. The van in the background was loaded with explosives and was rigged with a wire that flipped it. The wire was later rotoscoped out.

Same location. I suppose I can’t technically take credit for this one since I am in it. I actually was fake news.

It turns out some real pano-nerds reload these disposable cameras. Meet Deon Reynolds. Wow. With apologies to the XPan, the Widelux remains the gold standard panoramic film camera. It’s a lovely, temperamental beast, and you can get some amazing photos out of it. You can also destroy it if you forget to advance the film before you set a new shutter speed. It’s the only camera with a self-destruct sequence that isn’t from a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE film.

The reimagined Wideluxx to come.

This weird camera requires a frame and a half to shoot a single pano image so from a roll of 36, you can reliably expect to yield 20 or so panoramic images.

My pal Joe Trohman is a very talented photographer and he’s about to prove it, but I don’t want to step on his announcement. That's the two of us in Pasadena with his Widelux. We’ve been running and gunning, mostly in Los Angeles and last fall in Palm Springs. He’s been kind enough to share his cameras on our adventures. The shots below are my first shots run through a Widelux.

This gentleman recognized the camera the camera the moment he saw it, and I thanked him by not quite getting him in focus.

Declan shot these next two with Joe’s Widelux, and I think they’re brilliant.

These shots were developed and scanned at Eagle Rock Camera & Goods. Highly recommended place to buy cameras, and get your film developed. I wished I’d had mine scanned to see the sprocket holes, I may have my Palm Springs shots rescanned here.

Mr. Bridges and his wife are resurrecting the Widelux camera, or they’re threatening to. It’s going to be machined without any plastic parts in Germany which sounds both wonderful and fucking expensive. It will be worth it. You can register your interest for the crowdfunding effort over at this link.

The end of this roll from Palm Springs is also the end of this post…bye!

GD