Pentax 6x7 Panoramas of Germany’s Northern Sea
With Pro Image 100 and 3D-Printed Spool Extenders
4 min read by Stein_macht_fotos.Published on . Updated on .
I remember the anxiety when I loaded up the film and went out for shooting with my good friend Leona, who had traveled to the small touristy town of Cuxhaven just to shoot with me.
Most of my anxiety came from a) not having any experience with shooting 35 mm film through the Pentax 6x7 and b) the camera had missed focus constantly for five rolls already and was down a second repair order (I haven’t had the time to test it since). The latest repair involved the readjusting of the mirror plate inside the camera.
Loading my film into the 3D-printed spool extenders, ordered via eBay from Eastern Europe, combined with the taping and cutting it together with some leftovers of a 120 film, made me question if I knew what I was doing. But judge for yourself:
I’ve chosen Kodak Professional Image 100 since I do adore the colours (it renders beautiful greens), and it’s a rather affordable film.
After loading up the film I just went right to it. Sadly, I noticed that after ten frames, my Pentax 6x7 had another little issue, being that the 220 mode was not working, and the camera stopped advancing the film after 10 frames.
Not thinking on my feet, figuring I could bypass that issue by just opening the film cassette inside a darkroom bag, to reset the exposure counter to zero, I just spooled the roll back inside the container, losing six possible more exposures — which also proved challenging, since I had to do it blindly inside a darkroom bag.
Anyway, after I scanned my images some weeks later, I was relieved to find that the focus worked, as well as the exposure. Spooling everything back inside within a darkroom bag also worked out.
The results:
I’m quite happy with the results, although I still managed to miss the focus in a couple of them. Turns out that focusing a f/2.4 lens on medium format is pretty difficult to master.
In case you’d like to shoot 35mm film panoramas in Pentax 67, I found this tutorial very useful, thanks to Peter Jeffrey.
Feel free to follow the model Leona, or myself over at Instagram.