On a whim, I borrowed The Tech's Widelux F7 swing-lens panoramic 35mm camera, and brought it with me to Amrys's 24th birthday shindig in Slingerlands, NY. By "swing-lens," I mean that when you push the shutter, the lens revolves in a 140-degree arc, exposing a vertical slit of film as it travels. It's a unique camera: complicated yet primitive, seemingly old-fashioned but head-turning.

These pictures are a little lacking artistically, but as this is only my second roll with the Widelux -- and the first I've bothered to scan -- it seems appropriate to post a selection of images here. Obtaining good exposure is difficult with only three shutter speeds to choose from. Moving subjects present another challenge. And if you shoot with the camera anything but perfectly level, the vertical lines are distorted as much as the horizontals.

I had intended to shoot black-and-white, but thanks to a small oversight I arrived at our destination with only a couple rolls of Fujicolor NPZ, a high speed C-41 color portrait film. I'm not very good with color.

There is some slight cropping. It's easy to forget the crazy field of view, so an embarassing number of un-cropped shots include my fingers and sometimes the camera strap on the periphery of the frame.

The rocket pictured in many of the shots is a Super Soaker "Monster Rocket." Amanda works for Hasbro, and procured this lovely water rocket toy from her office. We broke it and repaired it several times. We defeated the launcher's safety mechanisms so we could shoot it horizontally, and instantly got it stuck high in a tree. The following day, we replaced the inflatable fuselage with a Wilson football, which resulted in dramatically superior flight characteristics.

The moving lens can do wonderful things to moving objects:

You got to know when to hold 'em.

The camera lens swings left to right. In this shot, it moves against the direction of rocket launch. Accordingly, you see only a little spray:

In this shot, the lens moves with the rocket, recording an impressive trail of water which did not actually exist at one instant in time:

These un-cropped scans of the negative should better demonstrate the exact aspect ratio of the Widelux:

FOOTNOTE 1: If you want to see some truly top-notch Widelux photography, check out Jeff Bridges's book. I'm a huge fan of his work.

FOOTNOTE 2: The Monster Rocket was taken off the market shortly after these pictures were taken. I guess some kids got hurt playing with one. Chalk up another victory for an overlitigious society.