Noblex 06/150 Panoramic: Two Early Images
My fascination with swing lens panoramic cameras continues after I recently aquired a Noblex 06/150 medium format panoramic camera. If you’ve never heard of a Noblex, I can’t say I really blame you. It doesn’t seem to be a camera many photographers go nuts about. In short, it is a similar concept to the more popular Widelux, but instead of 35mm film, it is a much beefier camera using larger medium format film.
I’ve written about my experiences with the Widelux on my blog a couple of times (some portraits and my first roll), and I continue to use the camera regularly. However, medium format film has always been more in my wheel house as my preferred format for serious work, so the Noblex feels like a natural progression to me. In fact, I wanted a Noblex more than a Widelux when I first entertained the notion of a swing lens panoramic camera, but they tend to be a lot harder to find at a decent price. It took me nearly five years to find one in good condition at a price I was willing to pay.
So what is a Noblex, and more importantly, what is a swing lens panoramic camera? Well, there are websites that will get more detailed into the specs than I’m willing to do. Camerapedia for example has a nice page dedicated to the Noblex that you can find here. In short, the Noblex is a camera with a “swinging lens” that rotates across a long film plane allowing for a wide cinematic aspect ratio in your final images. These cameras tend to be designed to capture wide sweeping landscapes, but they can also be used creatively for other subjects, such as portraits and nudes.
Besides the larger negative, the Noblex is different from the Widelux in one other key aspect. The Widelux is purely mechanical, while the Noblex is battery dependent and has an electronically controlled shutter mechanism (i.e. the lens sweep).
Normally I would consider this a bad thing, but with the Noblex the electronic control allows the swinging lens to speed up before actually exposing the negative and get a more consistent sweep, thus, resulting in more even exposures. This has been a big pain point for me with the Widelux. Despite a costly CLA, my Widelux tends to have banding issues every so often from the lens not moving across the film plane at an even constant speed.
It should also be noted that the Noblex 06/150 is a rather large camera, though surprisingly not very heavy. This isn’t a big problem for me as I’m used to carrying around medium format and even large format equipment. The Noblex is much lighter in weight than say, a Pentax 67, and if people can carry those around all day, then the Noblex should be a cake walk. The construction quality feels very 1990’s. In other words, a lot of plastic components. Sturdy plastic, but still plastic all the same.
The two images posted here are from my first outing with the Noblex 06/150 and so far I’m impressed with the results. These two images are from the first roll I’ve developed and I have about seven more rolls to get through, including a couple in color. For these I had the camera set up on a tripod because I was working in a thick forest environment without a lot of natural light coming through the tree canopy. My shutter speed was set to 1/15th of a second (which means the camera took about two full seconds to make the sweep across the film plane) so I had to use a tri-pod.
The results are surprisingly sharp and I must admit I really enjoy seeing the large 5×12 negatives come out of the developing tank. This is going to be one of those things were computer screens don’t quite do the results justice. Now I’m just going to have to try and figure out how I’m going to print these giant negatives!
Camera: Noblex 06/150 Medium Format Panoramic.
Film: Kodak Tri-X in 120. Developed in Rodinal at 1:50, 20C for 13 minutes.
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