This is another borrowed camera, I am borrowing rather than buying these days. I am keeping my G.P.S. counter going.

This one is the Lomography swing lens panoramic camera.

The first thing I needed to do was load it. Simple, right? No, I wasn’t sure how to thread the film, so I watched a video.

And even after watching that guide, I managed to snap the film. I used a scrap film and tried again a couple of times. Once I had it sorted in my mind, I loaded a roll of Adox 50….it snapped!! AAARRRGGGHHH. I watched the video again and realised I had threaded the film over the sprockets out of habit and with this camera, the film has to go under them.

Finally, everything was working.

There are two shooting settings, white or orange dot, which are for 1/2 a second or 1/60th. I left this one on 1/60th. I knew it would still mean pushing the film, causing lots of contrast. I was fine with that. The aperture is fixed at f8.

Here are some from that roll. They were all shot at Bempton and Flamborough on the east coast.

You get just over half the number of shots as stated on the film, as each image is about two shots wide. As these were contrasty and I would have to hand the camera back, I decided to load another film. This time a fomapan 100 as I would not have to push it quite so much, and therefore a more even density. I took one shot and THE FILM SNAPPED!!!!!

What was it??!! I put the film under the spockets, why did it snap? I stopped and thought, then thought some more…the winder, there is no lock. If you turn it the wrong way, there is nothing to stop it turning, and it snaps the film. So I loaded it again and put on some tape as a reminder of which way to turn it.

That solved the issue, and the camera worked smoothly. It was all human error, much to the relief of the camera’s owner.

Here are some of the results from the second roll.

The camera works just like a point and shoot, with just a little extra shooting time. You have to hold the camera steady for longer to allow the shutter to finish its pass. Shots that show the horizon have a curve to them, but closer subjects are less ‘curved’.

Alex Luyckx got much straighter results in this great blog post.

I did like using it, and I love the panoramic format, but would I buy this camera? No, it is a little too expensive and a little too ‘curved’. Saying that about the expense, I would buy an X-Pan if I had the money!

And now I have to post this one back to the owner…maybe 🤔