The Cirkut camera, mis-spelled on purpose to create it's own brand name by Kodak, was developed by 1905. With changes and improvements it was sold until 1940. In all 7 different types and sizes were offered. The height of the roll film was the main variant. Film came in "daylight load" rolls, 5", 6", 8" 10" and 16". And the cameras were simply numbered according to the film intended. Thus a #10 Cirkut takes 10" tall spools of film and can produce a negative 10" X up to 84" or more. The #6 and #8 were what Kodak called Cirkut outfits and not only had the long roll panoramic capability, but also served as either a 5X7 camera for the #6 or a 6.5X8.5 camera for the #8.
The old adage that anyone can buy a violin but not everyone can then make music is true of these beasts. They weren't for everybody, even then when new and all the accessories were available. They were expensive, and professional photographers bought them and then used them to make the long black and white cityscapes and panorama's of large groups, selling the prints to make a living. Many of them were used hard over long periods.
The way they work is that they have a mechanism, a motor that runs by winding up a huge clockwork spring. When turned on the energy stored in the wound spring brings a clockwork system of gears spinning at a speed regulated by a governor, like an old phonograph that spins constantly at 78 RPM. The motor then does 2 things. It pulls film past an open slit about 3/16" wide while it also drives the camera around a large lazy susan type affair with a giant sun gear. So all this motion is synchronized so that the film moving past the slit is exactly the same speed as the camera is moving around the top of the tripod, thus, when the film is in the gate, it is effectively still. The image is painted onto the film through the slit as the camera revolves around the big sun gear.
The result was a "contact" print, because the negative is giant, the same size as the finished picture. The picture I'll show is 9.5" X 44" of film. About a quadrillion megapixels to you guys that only can think in terms of tiny square dots. 400 square inches of possible pixels. Don't try this on your Apple.
The original scan was 9826X2030 because I only scanned at 200 ppi. But even that is reduced to 2904X600 to get something to drop in here. The scene is the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, with Tonopah down the hill in the distance, and this picture only encompassed about 210 degrees.
The old adage that anyone can buy a violin but not everyone can then make music is true of these beasts. They weren't for everybody, even then when new and all the accessories were available. They were expensive, and professional photographers bought them and then used them to make the long black and white cityscapes and panorama's of large groups, selling the prints to make a living. Many of them were used hard over long periods.
The way they work is that they have a mechanism, a motor that runs by winding up a huge clockwork spring. When turned on the energy stored in the wound spring brings a clockwork system of gears spinning at a speed regulated by a governor, like an old phonograph that spins constantly at 78 RPM. The motor then does 2 things. It pulls film past an open slit about 3/16" wide while it also drives the camera around a large lazy susan type affair with a giant sun gear. So all this motion is synchronized so that the film moving past the slit is exactly the same speed as the camera is moving around the top of the tripod, thus, when the film is in the gate, it is effectively still. The image is painted onto the film through the slit as the camera revolves around the big sun gear.
The result was a "contact" print, because the negative is giant, the same size as the finished picture. The picture I'll show is 9.5" X 44" of film. About a quadrillion megapixels to you guys that only can think in terms of tiny square dots. 400 square inches of possible pixels. Don't try this on your Apple.
The original scan was 9826X2030 because I only scanned at 200 ppi. But even that is reduced to 2904X600 to get something to drop in here. The scene is the Tonopah Historic Mining Park, with Tonopah down the hill in the distance, and this picture only encompassed about 210 degrees.
