In the 80s and 90s in Vancouver we had magazines and newspapers. The writers who worked for them were called journalists. Some of them who did not hold a steady job were called free-lance journalists or writers. I was a free-lance magazine photographer. Sometimes we defined ourselves as editorial photographers.
This field for both free-lance writers and photographers was in Vancouver very competitive. You had to pitch interesting and unusual story ideas to editors. As a photographer I often made the rounds not only in Vancouver but in Toronto and New York with something that was called a portfolio.
Art directors, sometimes called design directors liked to be vowed by new stuff. This is why I have a large collection of cameras of which some are these two unusual swivel lens panoramics.
My first purchase was the Japanese Widelux. Later I bought the Russian Horizont (both use 35mm film. I also have a very large Noblex 175 that produces a negative that is 7 inches long.
Much has been discussed about the true difference between a wide angle lens camera and these swivel lens cameras. I believe that the swivel lens units are the closest to human vision in that you see what is in front of you but there is that peripheral vision on the left and on the right.
The 35 mm Widelux and Horizont have a flaw. Because the lens has to start from the standstill sometimes you get a stutter. The only solution (for me at least) is to have them serviced regularly by our Vancouver treasure, camera repairman Horst Wenzel.
Another flaw of the Widelux (the Horizont, touch wood, not yet) is that there is a pulley inside made of rubberized plastic that wears out. Nobody anywhere in the world can deal with replacing the pulley. Except of course Wenzel! On a miniature lathe he works on a hockey puck. My Widelux has that intimate Canadian connection!
Of late I have discovered that with fewer people wanting me to photograph them and the fact that I do not feel like going out into the street to “document” telephone poles, there is a solution that is now keeping me excited and busy. I use my scanner as a camera.
A Scanner - a burst of inspiratio
In the Widelux picture in today’s blog the double appearance of C in my print happened because I did not load the camera correctly. It is a lucky mistake. I took the Widelux to Wenzel and told him he had not repaired it well. I was soon told that I was wrong. He showed me how I had missed one of the rollers when I loaded the camera.
What this means is that thanks to Wenzel I can now repeat this lovely mistake.
