Pix (ex-)Panorama
As part of my ongoing fascination with cheezoid focus-free cameras, I grabbed this one--its special twist is that the 35mm frame was masked off to shoot only in panorama format.
Well, I think the idea of wasting the top and bottom of every frame is kind of goofy, but luckily it turns out you can snap the mask right out of the back of the camera and use the full 35mm format.
I got all excited, because I figured that the lens coverage would be at its limits at the corners of the full 35mm frame, and I'd get nice vignetting and blurriness, a la Holga, Lomo, etc. I loaded up film and off I went.
Results: the pictures were mystifyingly sharp! Definitely the sharpest from any of the plasticams I've tried so far. Huh, did they accidentally put a glass lens in this thing?
I guess it makes some sense they'd use a slightly better lens, since the panorama format enlarges the negative more than regular 4x6 prints.
The viewfinder is still cropped to the panorama format, of course, but the framing accuracy on these finders is always so hopeless that it hardly matters....
Pix (ex-)Panorama
As part of my ongoing fascination with cheezoid focus-free cameras, I grabbed this one--its special twist is that the 35mm frame was masked off to shoot only in panorama format.
Well, I think the idea of wasting the top and bottom of every frame is kind of goofy, but luckily it turns out you can snap the mask right out of the back of the camera and use the full 35mm format.
I got all excited, because I figured that the lens coverage would be at its limits at the corners of the full 35mm frame, and I'd get nice vignetting and blurriness, a la Holga, Lomo, etc. I loaded up film and off I went.
Results: the pictures were mystifyingly sharp! Definitely the sharpest from any of the plasticams I've tried so far. Huh, did they accidentally put a glass lens in this thing?
I guess it makes some sense they'd use a slightly better lens, since the panorama format enlarges the negative more than regular 4x6 prints.
The viewfinder is still cropped to the panorama format, of course, but the framing accuracy on these finders is always so hopeless that it hardly matters....