Seems Legit?

[Harlequin565]

Listing more cameras for the charity shop today. This, on the back of a "Panorama Wide Pic" with it's "Panoramic lens". I must confess, it looked to me like the film gate was panoramic simply due to having the top and bottom of a regular 35mm frame masked off.

Is the sticker just marketing bumf? Or does anyone know if this camera actually used more than 1 frame of film per shot? Internet suggests the image size was 13x36mm supporting the theory that it's rubbish.

 

[Flighter]

Based on this 35mmc article and the comments, including the use of the term ‘faux panorama' it's likel that it just crops the normal 35mm frame.

Edited to add: interesting that Holly reported that the fixed focus lens focused just before infinity.

Edited further to add: The austerityphoto site agrees

What you have is an all plastic camera with fixed focus, shutter and aperture that takes shots on the Panorama frame developed by Kodak (13×36 mm) . Effectively this masks the top and bottom of a standard 35mm frame (24x36mm) giving a widescreen style frame (and wastes about a ½ of the available frame). I personally prefer my cameras without it.

 

[Nod]

I would say that the sticker's advice was to make sure that the user asked for the prints to come back as (IIRC, something like) 10x4 inches rather than letterbox images on a normal enprint (6x4) print. From memory, the results were OK at that size (10x4ish) and you got the pack number of shots per roll.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Sounds like a reminder of the bad old days when most people could ONLY have what they got 'in camera' and few could manage their own processing.

 

[Harlequin565]

I would say that the sticker's advice was to make sure that the user asked for the prints to come back as (IIRC, something like) 10x4 inches rather than letterbox images

Aha! This makes sense. I thought it was an odd statement.

 

[zx9]

I would say that the sticker's advice was to make sure that the user asked for the prints to come back as (IIRC, something like) 10x4 inches rather than letterbox images on a normal enprint (6x4) print. From memory, the results were OK at that size (10x4ish) and you got the pack number of shots per roll.

Yes ^^^^ we still have a similar one though not Panasonic branded, it was used by my wife in the mid / late 1990's the results were quite good given the construction was only slightly better than a disposable or one use camera. If memory serves me right she bought it after using a single use panoramic camera, we have some photos in the family albums taken on ours mostly mountain ranges on skiing trips.

With all the talk of toy cameras, I did consider taking it to Zell am See this year just for a laugh but unfortunately forgot to pack it.