Widelux Revival

Harlequin565

Harlequin565

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Very interesting video...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tHl4yAP6qc


I heard Jeff Bridges being interviewed on Analog Talk some time ago and have his more recent book done with the camera. I wasn't aware, that while he was being interviewed recently for SGC magazine, he just asked if they thought they could revive the camera again. they thought it was a joke. He wasn't joking. Now it looks like the project could be going somewhere. With Hollywood money (and passion) and German engineering, it does sound plausible - especially as they don't have to build a shutter.

I've always hankered after one, but the prices are silly. Maybe if this makes it to a Kickstarter I'll be tempted. Certainly worth grabbing the latest copy of Silver Grain Classics magazine to have a read about it though.

Interested for sure.
 
Thank you for posting that. A way of making images that has interested me for a long time though I have never used a scanning camera, the closest I have got are the sweep panos from a phone.
For a historic look at the technique take a look at some of Josef Sudek's works with a (even then) old Kodak camera that as far as I can see used cut down 8x10 sheet film appearing to be one shot per sheet of individually loaded film around a curved film path. Mind blowing effort for a man with only one arm. (sorry for the slight off topic)
 
silvergrainclassics.com

The Widelux Revival Project

Jeff and Susan Bridges, with the editors of SilvergrainClassics magazine, have formed a new company which plans to produce a new swing lens panoramic film camera!
silvergrainclassics.com silvergrainclassics.com
 
sphexx said:
It’s available as a regular podcast everywhere. Maybe that’s implied by your post but I know nothing about how Spotify works :)
Click to expand...
Yeah, sort of. I don't think they have a central website you can get them from, so you're limited to feeders. In this case, Apple, Google, or Spotify. I chose the lesser of the evils (in my humble opinion of course!) Because it's quite old, locating it can be tricky.
 
Harlequin565 said:
Yeah, sort of. I don't think they have a central website you can get them from, so you're limited to feeders. In this case, Apple, Google, or Spotify. I chose the lesser of the evils (in my humble opinion of course!) Because it's quite old, locating it can be tricky.
Click to expand...

I use the Pocket Casts app on ipad and quickly found it by just searching Jeff Bridges rather to my surprise. Pocket Casets is vastly superior to BBC Sounds or Apple Podcasts and many of the others in case anyone is interested. I don’t use the Premium version which is pricey, I think mine is free unless I paid pennies for it years ago.
 
Harlequin565 said:
Very interesting video...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tHl4yAP6qc


I heard Jeff Bridges being interviewed on Analog Talk some time ago and have his more recent book done with the camera. I wasn't aware, that while he was being interviewed recently for SGC magazine, he just asked if they thought they could revive the camera again. they thought it was a joke. He wasn't joking. Now it looks like the project could be going somewhere. With Hollywood money (and passion) and German engineering, it does sound plausible - especially as they don't have to build a shutter.

I've always hankered after one, but the prices are silly. Maybe if this makes it to a Kickstarter I'll be tempted. Certainly worth grabbing the latest copy of Silver Grain Classics magazine to have a read about it though.

Interested for sure.
Click to expand...
What's the difference between the Widelux and the panoramic slit cameras like Horizon etc?
 
This Widelux revival (now labelled Wideluxx or Widelux.x) seems to have continued past the prototype stage, first cameras being delivered to Jeff Bridges...

Home - WIDELUXX | The New Panoramic Paradigm | All Analog | Film Forever

GO WIDE.Discover the worlds hidden in every moment with WideluxX™. A moving lens. Sweeping analog panoramas.PREORDER NOWOnly 350 in the first release.A Contemporary Tool, Not a Retro GestureThe WideluxX™ is not a nostalgic return to the past. It exists alongside contemporary tools, offering a...
wideluxx.com wideluxx.com
 
Woohoo, The Widelux.x is now open for pre-orders, if you've got a spare £3,720 and are prepared to wait 8 months or so! And you can get your initials engraved inside (so it's non-returnable). (In the 3 hours since I first saw this pre-order page, availability has gone down from 244 to 208, out of the total of 320.)

The pitch is pretty good, but the pitches for some of the cameras that @srichards has tried were pretty good, too. Maybe I'll wait...

Home - WIDELUXX | The New Panoramic Paradigm | All Analog | Film Forever

GO WIDE.Discover the worlds hidden in every moment with WideluxX™. A moving lens. Sweeping analog panoramas.PREORDER NOWOnly 350 in the first release.A Contemporary Tool, Not a Retro GestureThe WideluxX™ is not a nostalgic return to the past. It exists alongside contemporary tools, offering a...
wideluxx.com wideluxx.com
 
This camera is almost at the top of my most desired equipment just behind a Gandolfi. But at this sort of price it ain't gonna happen whereas a Gandolfi, hmmm..
 
H'mm my pano shots look better than the shots shown in the advert (with upright building etc) and you can use your top lens (e.g. sharpest) as well.....what am I missing?????
Panoramasig1.jpg
 
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excalibur2 said:
H'mm my pano shots look better than the shots shown in the advert (with upright building etc) and you can use your top lens (e.g. sharpest) as well.....what am I missing?????
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What did you use to record that image? I'm just wondering what caused the curvature in the roof at top left.
 
excalibur2 said:
H'mm my pano shots look better than the shots shown in the advert (with upright building etc) and you can use your top lens (e.g. sharpest) as well.....what am I missing?????
Click to expand...

Is this panoramic in the sense of stitching together multiple exposures or in the sense of cropping a wide angle photograph? If the latter, the Widelux would/should give a different result with a three dimensional static subject.
 
StephenM said:
Is this panoramic in the sense of stitching together multiple exposures or in the sense of cropping a wide angle photograph? If the latter, the Widelux would/should give a different result with a three dimensional static subject.
Click to expand...
You lose the full width of 35mm doing a two shot pano and it gets worse doing more, and too expensive to fill the 35mm width with many shots. The advantage over say using a 17mm lens is you can use say a 40 mm lens for shots that the eye would see paning. If I ever went digi I would say take 16 shots with a 40 or 50mm lens of a scene and stitch them all together. I seen the results on a forum and they are fantastic. Anyway I still think my pano shots (although thinner) are better than the ones on the advert with building leaning over etc.
 
The widest stitch pano I've taken with a FF DSLR is somewhere in the 30s shots in portrait format with about a 50% overlap between each frame. Still pondering how best to display the whole thing and where to get it printed - it's a bit wide!!!

Weren't the original Wideluxes (Wideluces?!) used for school shots back in the '70s and '80s?
 
excalibur2 said:
You lose the full width of 35mm doing a two shot pano and it gets worse doing more, and too expensive to fill the 35mm width with many shots. The advantage over say using a 17mm lens is you can use say a 40 mm lens for shots that the eye would see paning. If I ever went digi I would say take 16 shots with a 40 or 50mm lens of a scene and stitch them all together. I seen the results on a forum and they are fantastic. Anyway I still think my pano shots (although thinner) are better than the ones on the advert with building leaning over etc.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure I understand, but I take it you mean panoramic in the sense of stitching then.

Nod said:
Weren't the original Wideluxes (Wideluces?!) used for school shots back in the '70s and '80s?
Click to expand...

As a Latin plural, that seems to be correct.

As to school photos, at my old school when I was a pupil, panoramic whole school photographs of all pupils and teachers present on the day were framed and mounted on a long corridor wall. The earliest was from the 1920s; one of the teachers in the earliest was still there when I was a pupil, and was the best teacher of any subject I ever encountered. The Widelux was too modern for the old photos, so there must have been an alternative. I still have the panoramic whole school photos from my years there.
 
StephenM said:
I'm not sure I understand, but I take it you mean panoramic in the sense of stitching then.
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Indeed.....useful if you want a wide angle shot and only have a range finder camera with fixed lens. Being short of cash, many moons ago, only had a 50 mm lens on my Pentax S3 and it was ages before I bought a 35mm lens, so always a problem for WA shots, and unbelievable once when I used a Etrs with 80mm lens and wanted a very wide angle shot I actually printed four colour photos and stuck them together with selotapeo_O
 
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