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I have rented the Fuji 6x17 upon occasion, and one CSX photographer in
Florida actually talked someone at CSX into OK-ing the purchase of one
for his office!!!! (What a waste of $4500 for a few photos when a 6x17
camera could have been rented for $50 per day.) This camera takes a
special graduated n.d. filter with circular center darkening to balance
the loss of light reaching the edges of the film for even exposures. It
has thumb-action film advance, three shots per roll with 120-size films.
As far as I am concerned, this 6x17 format camera is nothing more than a
wide-angle 5x7 camera with 2/3 of the image cut away, leaving just the
center strip of film. There is no lens rotation and curved film plane as
in panoramic cameras of yesteryear. The photos look great in that 6x17
format, but these same effects could be obtained with other, less
expensive, "normal" photo equipment. "Real" panoramic cameras have
rotating lenses with moving rolls of film in sizes from 35mm up to 10
inches high that take strip pictures, which give you very different
results than the 6x17 with stationary film. I guess one must first
define the meaning of "panoramic".
Someone at CSX saw some photos that a coal customer had shot with Kodak's
disposable "panoramic" camera, and suddenly he wanted such "panoramic"
photos of a coal pier for the annual report. ("I don't know what photos
I want you to shoot, but I'll know them when I see them--just make sure
they are dramatic!") That's not a lot of direction, and if I didn't get
something he liked, then, of course, it would be my fault.
I drew the assignment as I was well-known among CSX'ers for shooting
out-of-the ordinary images and risking life and limb to get my photos
(I'm weird, I guess). I did a series of these 6x17 images from a
helicopter with a gyro-stabilizer, but then I shot some in the VERTICAL
format. ("Are these dramatic enough for you, Mike?"). This was a coal
pier with two colliers (coal boats) tied up in the foreground with the
coal storage and handling facility in the background--a natural for that
long, slender format.
The CSX annual report guy loved them, but, in order that all of the
"sidebar" annual report photos have consistency, he cropped the 6x17
panoramic image into a regular 6x7 size!!! It looked OK like that
because nobody else saw what it really looked like, but the uncropped
image was super in that it showed so much more of the scene from a very
creative angle (at least I thought so). Later, the uncropped photo was
printed in Photomethods or some other pro-photog magazine and won some
award for annual report photography--I got a nice spot meter as a prize.
This same vertical "panoramic" image will be printed in 100% size on page
21 in my Chessie/CSXT company photo book due out later this year. John
B. says check it out.
John B. Corns
Owings Mills, Maryland
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