Widelux Group Pano Shooting Rig - a Picture

Hi all,

 

About a week ago, I wrote about taking a group pano of 20+/- people, laying out a 120-degree arc first, and

composing on the ground instead of the viewfinder.

 

Patrick Dempsey chimed in that a fast way to set the arc up, and the shot,would be stakes and string, forming 2x

11' equilateral triangles, back to back. That would give the 120-degree Widelux sweep, plus the 11' fixed-focus

distance.

 

Well, the contraption now exists. Attached below is a photo of the Dempsey Shooting Rig.

 

The orange stake is where the tripod would be. All of the orange string / ropes are 11' long, forming two equilateral

triangles back-to-back.

 

The yellow stakes define the two arc endpoints and the arc midpoint.

 

The white rope is about 14' long, and has two knots on it, one at 11' and one at 13' (where the blue dots are). Logic

being that if the 11' radius arc isn't quite enough, I can fine-tune everybody back to about 13' radius.

 

It's small and fast to set-up. Compact so I can take it on a motorcycle if I want. About the only problem I've had with

it so far is it tangles a bit. I'm going to think a bit on that - it may be that perhaps carabiners on the stakes, and

loose 11' lengths of rope, are a better refinement. But for now, I'm happy.<div></div>

Ha! The setup looks great Doug. You might be right about the carabiners... then you could just have a bunch of 11 foot cords and stakes. As far as the name.... I'm honored... but Euclid should really take the credit. ;)

I like the name, "Dempsey Shooting Rig"! Looking forward to seeing some photos!

What about a single tent stake or large nail, an 11' piece of string with 2 small loops and a piece of chalk? Could fit into one of those alu cigar tubes.

Hey Doug, you always need to use a tripod, right?

 

So how about let the tripod legs form the 120 degree limit? You could set the tripod first, then put a stake under the camera rotation center. If necessary, use of a plumb bob will add class to the operation.

 

Now, a single 11' string, tied to the stake, can be used to sweep out the area of coverage. If you drop some bread crumbs, or pebbles,etc, everyone will know where to stand. As the string contacts each of the forward legs, this limits you to just under 120 degrees. If you need a centerline, the rear tripod leg through the stake will be close.

 

I'll deed any interest in the name off to the first posters. I think it adds an air of sophistication by calling it a "Modified Dempsey Rig", or perhaps a "Dempsey-De Groote Rig."

Originally, I was doing these groups the way the Cirkut owners manual says to: a stake in the ground, then swing an arc from that stake and pose people along the arc. Then I realized that posing the people would be faster (for the subjects, not for me) if I were to have something on the ground ahead of time, so I could have hands free and not be tethered, and could compose anybody along any spot on the arc, and so I started to lay neon string on the ground, posing people along that arc, and I'd pull the string out of pic at the last second.

 

I have seen an old Cirkut photo of some sort of female roller skating team on the streets of DC or NYC, and there's a chalkline they're posed on. All those shooters had to use *something* to get it just right.

 

Anyway - anything else besides string that could be pulled away fast, I'd worry about it showing up in the photo. Even green paint, if the shade was off (and paint I'd have to buy again when I ran out). Pebbles in the grass, if big enough to see, might be big enough for a mower to fling the next time the lawn is mowed, or I'd have more time spent trying to pick them up before the shoot.

 

Then I thought of trying to use the tripod legs as sights, but worried about accuracy, and about not physically having some trail on the ground that people could walk up to.

 

The stakes / ropes are quick and have proven accurate, and don't require much thought or any drafting skills, letting me concentrate on arranging the people. Plus, I can easily see as I go just how far along I am at any time, ie, how much more space to fill, by just seeing where I'm at and where the ends are.

 

The rope stuff is mostly a Widelux tool, because while shooting with my Widelux, the camera itself doesn't have anything to really help me aim / site the arc endpoints.

 

While shooting with my Kodak Panoram, that camera has 3 BBs on the top, forming a 120d angle, and a user can sight down the BBs like a gunsight, to accurately find the arc endpoints.

 

In some ways, shooting with a Cirkut would be easier, because you don't need to worry about the endpoints of the arc - just let the camera rotate far enough to cover both ends with some extra cushion besides.

 

I do like the plumb bob idea, though it's probably not needed for precision, since the Widelux has lots of depth of field. And I'm going to check and see if the tripod legs could be combined with a single stake, to perform the same function as the rope-stake rig.

Ahh, I see, you're thinking about doing lots of groups. Well, if the old time Cirkut shooters did that for a living, they probably thought up just about every angle there was.

 

Still, if you had a way to temporarily mark the subject position so you didn't have to interrupt to remove the string... A couple of ideas: if on pavement, perhaps a squirt gun or water bottle with nozzle, the subjects could stand on top of the water spots. In grass, perhaps a small sack of straw, or grass clippings, or tree leaves, etc.

 

What I would envision is to use the stake itself as a plumb bob, then put it into the ground under the camera. Then, at the far end of the 11' string, go til you touch a tripod leg. Then walk through the arc, squirting spots on the ground as you go, until you touch the other tripod leg.

 

Personally, I'd feel more comfortable with a good viewfinder, but if they don't exist, there must be a good reason why not.

I like the squirt gun idea, though I'm not sure it would be much help in grass.

 

 

 

 

"Personally, I'd feel more comfortable with a good viewfinder, but if they don't exist, there must be a good reason why not."

 

I think it's due to several factors with the Widelux.

 

The viewfinder is offset to the left from the taking lens, so you've got parallax there. I suspect that's because of bearings / gears / mechanims to rotate the lens, crammed into the area above the lens.

 

Besides that, the taking lens turret itself is part of the problem. It cuts off a chunk of what you can see to the right in the viewfinder.

 

Other thing is how to create a lens (viewfinder) that can cover 120d of rotation. I think the optics would be very interesting on that project. When I use the Widelux for snapshots, and I *fill* the viewfinder frame, there's a ton of unused space in the negs when I get them back from the lab. My other swing-lens camera, a Kodak Panoram, just uses a small viewfinder that only shows about 5% of the image, just enough to line up the horizon in the shot.

 

Widelux viewfinder works pretty good for snapshots, but when the goal is a group and you want people edge-to-edge on the neg (in order to get biggest possible people images) and cram the most people into the space, laying out the grid on the ground has proven to be the more precise way to go.

I've just been reading up on these cameras. Up 'til now, I thought the Widelux was some version of a Cirkut camera. Anyway, the Widelux seems very cool; I'm going to do more reading on these.

 

Regarding the viewfinder, I see what you mean after looking at photos of the camera. I'm going to do some thinking about viewfinder optics, as I get some free time. If I come up with anything useful, I'll post it here. I'm presuming that all the Widelux cameras have the accessory shoe, so that it might be used to hold some sort of rigged up viewfinder.

The pics look like Cirkut pics, because the Widelux film is on a curved plane, and exposure is made through a vertical slit (like a Cirkut). So they both have that "look" about them.

 

The accessory shoe isn't centered either, and I'm using mine to hold a level. It can't be used for a flash, because any flash would only illuminate one column of the film, just a single vertical stripe.

 

The Widelux is very cool. It can emulate a Cirkut, if used that way.

 

Or.... You can tilt the camera down and bow the horizon up. Film costs don't kill you, because it just uses 2 frames of 35mm per image.

 

And it's an incredible candid camera - some of my favs are shots that I didn't expect anything from.... my son sound asleep in my Jeep on the last day of summer vaca comes to mind. He's reclined in the pasenger seat, and I'm taking it from the driver's door, and you have the steering wheel and front windshield and back window all in the same shot, and all the clutter of our trip.<div></div>

Something else on laying out the grid - usually the people who are going to be in the shot are fascinated with the whole process, and watching and wondering, so I'm talking as I go, telling them about the old Cirkuts, and how this is similar, and they'll be posed in an arc, working to get them interested / involved. Usually, by the time I've laid out the arc and start posing people, they're into it, and they all recall seeing those long Cirkut panos....

 

Here's one more candid shot, of a family who stopped at a primitive hot springs in Colorado while we were there. Candid group panos are hilarious, because they come out looking like the painting "The Last Supper", with each and every couple or trio off in their own little worlds....<div></div>