A few years ago, I had the idea to use my Holga WPC (wide pinhole camera), which shoots 6×12 images natively, to create full 360o panoramas. What I do is to take a photo, then advance the film half of a frame (6″), rotate the camera 90o to the right (it’s important to rotate the camera to the right, because the film advances to the left, and since the pinhole reverses the image, you need to rotate right in order to get overlap in the correct order), take another photo, advance half a frame, etc. Four of those gives me 360o coverage, with every frame except the first half and the last half being double exposed. It works really well with pretty uniform scenes, and looks funky/cool/weird with uneven, city scenes. Here’s the first one I took, on top of the Mount Beacon fire tower:
And here are a few more that I’ve done since then. As you can see, some work well, some don’t work quite so well, but they can all be stared at for quite a while 🙂
Taken on the roof of my apartment building Socrates Sculpture Garden in Astoria, Queens, taken on a cloudy day, so conveniently any people in the shot are erased by their own movement 🙂Union Square farmer’s marketGrand Central Station (you can see where I used my cellphone as a timer and to steady the camera for the 7-minute exposure) 😉 Bryant Park. So, I metered this at 400 (it’s XP2), then my sister called and I was speaking to her while doing this whole 360 thing. Being distracted, and having just shot the GCT photo above, instead of exposing each frame for 2 seconds, I exposed each for 2 minutes. As you can clearly see, film don’t care 😀Bryant Park redo of the above on expired Ektachrome because I thought no way would the XP2 shot come out 😀Times Square. I’m pretty sure tripods are not allowed in Times Square, but there were two cops drinking coffee and eating donuts right next to me and they didn’t seem to care. Also proves that tourists are the only type of people that can stay still for minutes in a row.Woodstock, NY. It is actually mind-boggling to me that this came out so smooth and seamless. First of all, like all these other 360’s, it’s a stitch, because my scanner is less than 20″ long. Second, and most amazingly, it’s my standard 1/2 double exposure, so only the 6cm on the far right and far left are NOT double exposures. The second two (of 4) exposures are completely double exposed. But it looks like one huge, smooth panorama. MAGIC, I tell you!
Brooklyn, NY. I was waiting outside a rehearsal building and exposed this for 15 minutes per side. It was a cold night and my fingers were about to fall off after that hour!
All images are clickable to full-sized, scrollable images. I strongly recommend you click through because these tiny compressed images just don’t do the panoramas justice 😀
