This story made my day. Kyle McDougall, a Canadian YouTuber based in the UK, has tested out a custom-modified Pentax 645 that shoots 32 frames on medium format 120 film, instead of the standard 16 frames, producing dreamy panoramic stills.
McDougall received the camera from one of his followers, who must be a genius, because, along with creativity, modifying the Pentax camera required some serious engineering skills. The Pentax 645 is a medium-format film camera launched in the mid-1980s.
To make the Pentax half frame, Pencine120 masked film gate and adjusted the prism. He also tweaked the gearing so it only advanced halfway, along with making changes to the electronics so that the camera could correctly read out the frames.
Watch: YouTuber test out a custom-modified half frame Pentax 645 medium format camera
While Pencine120 made some serious changes to the Pentax, cutting the frames in half creates iconic panoramic shots. In fact, the wide shots look brilliant and only bolster the Pentax 645’s reputation of being an affordable medium format film camera capable of producing image quality comparable to large format.
McDougall was able to snap some beautiful shots along the Hastings coastline in England, which really suited the modified, panoramic field of view. Although, in post-production, he ran into some issues as scanning these images proved tricky due to the unique, modified frame size.
That said, to Pencine120’s credit, the frame size was practically the same as XPan, a film produced for the TX-1 and Hasselblad XPan cameras – systems that could switch between standard and panoramic modes.
Half-frame film cameras like the Pentax 17 are sliced in half to create vertical images, so it's interesting to see a film camera go the other way in order to create panoramas.
You’ll never catch me taking apart a camera and messing about with its insides, but this video certainly has me more interested in experimenting with film, or at least finding novel ways of using my mirrorless Sony A7 III to create more immersive photos.
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