A while ago, we broke the story about Paul Kohlhausen and his K-Pan camera that he 3D printed to shoot 6×14 medium format negative photos. Back then, he was still playing with the idea of putting it on Kickstarter. Lucky for you all, he’s done it and photographers will be able to hook up their very own K-Pan and 4×5 camera lenses to shoot medium format panoramic photos. Photographers who back this idea and project are rewarded with a ton of goodies not only including the camera, but also rolls of film and a swanky tote bag.
To refresh the memory of many of you, Paul created this camera because he couldn’t have the camera that he wanted.something bigger than medium format but nowhere as large as large format. He told us in an interview:
“I really wanted to try shooting larger negatives than standard medium format. At the same time I wanted to avoid the hassle of using 4×5 or 8×10 sheet film, which made me look into shooting panoramic frames on 120mm film. I also wanted to finally give 3D printing a shot, seeing that at the time I was putting together a portfolio for my applications to architecture and design degrees. I’ve actually had a couple people say I should mass produce this camera, to which I responded with something along the line of “Sure, invest in my R&D to make this project market-worthy and I’ll send you one from the first batch!””
Details from the Kickstarter page are below:
How it works:
- It shoots five 6x14cm frames per roll of 120 film
- The kit comes in two main parts; the lens cone and the camera body
- The body contains a removable pressure plate, dark slide and lid. The lid plate is outfitted with the film winding knobs, fastening screws and two universal cold shoe mounts.
- Loading the film is done by removing said lid plate, similar to removing the bottom plate on a Leica M.
- Focus is set to infinity by default; it can be drawn closer by inserting dedicated spacer brackets between the lens cone and body (10mm bracket included in the kit).
The hardware:
- Components are made of lightproof, highly robust grey SLS nylon (see picture below). Yes, the raw components are white in the video and other pictures. We’ve stopped using that material because it is too translucent.
- Totals to only ~350 grams without a lens
- The body is 22cm wide and 9cm tall
- Embedded steel screw threads
- Standard ¼-20 UNC tripod mount
- Lens mount (the “lens board”) is 2mm thick with a 33mm diameter hole (fits a wide variety of Copal 0 shutter lenses)
Be sure to check out the K-Pan on Kickstarter.
