City Diaries - Hamburg Panoramas

Posted by Dr. Theodor Yemenis October 06, 2016

City Diaries - Hamburg Panoramas

( sea also a more recent serie of 6x17 urban panoramic images: 6x17 panoramas )

[ City Diaries ] - Working on my long time project "City Diaries". Utilising analog and digital capture and postprocessing techniques to find creative solutions for my goal to investigate the urban spaces of modern european cities. Cities are complex constructions in space and time ( history, memory ). The Cities which I have already investigated or I am still investigating are: Athens, Berlin, Hamburg, Kiev, Lisbon, Porto. Some more are soon to come ... here some snapshots on work done on Lisbon and Porto ( Portugal ).

[ DE ] Städte-Tagebücher - Die Auseinandersetzungen mit Orten und Städten. Durch den Einsatz verschiedene technischen Aufnahmemedien wie analoge und digitale Kameras werden Ansichten der Städte aufgezeichnet und gespeichert ( für die Zukunft aufbewahrt ). Hier sollen die Geschichten der Häuser, der Straßen, des Ortes eingefangen und aufgezeichnet werden. Das Projekt thematisiert, wie durch verschiedene Medien Erinnerung gespeichert und wieder erweck werden kann.

Leit-Begriffe: Erinnerung ( Mnemosyne ), Geschichte, Erinnerungsräume, kulturelles Gedächtnis.

[ www.photovisionproject.com ]

City Diary - Hamburg ( analog panoramic photography )

In recent time I developed a strong interest for the panoramic format anything from 6x12 and above. I was attracted from the huge negatives and I was impressed from a photographic exhibition of huge panoramic prints by the MAGNUM photographer Paolo Pellegrin "Hamburger Hafen: Die grosse Freiheit" ( Flo Peters Gallery ) and another one by Jens Olof Lasthein "Home Among Black Hills". ( Freelens Gallery). Pellegrin uses a medium format panoramic camera to depict the urban environment of Hamburg. Jens Olof Lasthein uses a 35mm panoramic camera for street portraits and social documentation.

Speicherstadt - Hamburg Panoramas. DAYI 617 S II.

So I decided to start a personal panoramic project. At the beginning I used an old metal build russian "Horizon" 35mm camera. The Horizon is a mechanical swing-lens panoramic camera. The main characteristic of this camera is its rotating lens that takes in a 120° panorama as the shutter button is pressed.


Horizon mechanical panoramic camera.

The first experiments were encouraging, although the Horizon had various problems like: light leaks, sometimes irregular rotating speed, problems with the film transport ( see the pictures below ). Eventually I sold the camera but the faszination with panoramic photography remained.

So I changed to medium format and a much more solid camera. Here you can find my first experiences and results using a 6x17 medium format panoramic film camera. The Camera I use now is a DAYI 617 S II with a Rodenstock Grandagon-N 90mm lens.

DAYI 617 S II, Rodenstock Grandagon-N 90mm

The DAYI 617 S II is a very solid build camera with many options and facilities but it is really heavy. In order to use it properly you need all the time a heavy duty tripod.

Finally in the last section of pictures below there are some digital images taken with a Nikon D800E, 16-35mm Nikkor. The images are cropped and processed afterwards in Adobe LR6.

I am still enthousiastic about panoramic photography and panorama pictures. I would keep the project going on.