Hasselblad XPan Modification

Land formations a few miles south of the entrance to Ghost Ranch in Northern New Mexico

I've always been fascinated with wide angle and panoramic photography. I've slowly, over the years, gathered a collection of cameras and lenses that are meant to create wide angle images: wide angle lenses; fisheye lenses; Widelux and Horizont panoramic cameras and the Lomography Spinner 36, which produces an images that encompasses 360 degrees.

I think that wide angle or panoramic photography echoes the field of view and its peripheral vision of the human eye and that is one of the reasons I like shooting these images.

I've read about the Hasselblad XPan cameras but because they are so expensive — about $5,000 — I've never seriously considered buying one until recently.
I saw an add on Craigslist about a damaged XPan. The price was really low so I thought I'd take a chance of buying and repairing it.

The XPan is an extremely unique camera, providing the advantages of the 35mm format but also the ability to swiftly change to full panorama format without having to change the film. The XPan utilizes a dual-format, producing both full panorama 24x65mm format in addition to conventional 24x36mm format on the exact same film. It was the first dual-format 35mm camera on the market that expanded the format instead of masking it, making sure that every exposure utilized the full area of the film.

When shooting with the XPan, as the film is exposed, it is wound back frame-by-frame into the cassette, thereby protecting the exposed section in case the camera was accidentally opened. This useful feature – combined with the XPan’s extremely quiet exposure and film transport – also reduced the risk of unwanted noise, since the camera wound film when the photographer decided to load film, not at the unexpected end of a roll.

I bought the damaged XPan and found out the lens mount was damaged, making it unable to mount a lens onto the camera. Repair of the mount was expensive and out of the question, and since the lenses made for the XPan are expensive, I thought I'd try to take the original lens mount off and replace it with a Nikon mount, enabling me to use a lens I have that has a Nikon mount: a non-circular Samyang 8mm fisheye.

There are lens adapters to enable an XPan camera to use Nikon lenses, but since the original lens mount was damaged, unfortunately it wouldn't accommodate one of these adapters.

So in collaboration with a friend who is a mechanical engineer/fabricator, the damaged XPan lens mount was removed from the camera and a new Nikon mount was attached to the camera.

The lens mount removal was one of those things where the person performing the task might warn, "Don't try this at home."

With the Samyang lens attached, the XPan looks a bit strange to those familiar with the original camera, so I refer to it either as a Hasselstein or Frankenblad.

Since the Samyang is a non-circular fisheye lens, it produces an image that covers the panoramic size of the negative in the XPan, and since most of the distortion produced by this lens lies outside the area on the negative, it produces some very sharp photographs that are relatively distortion free.

And since the Samyang is a lens that covers a wider area of view than any of the standard XPan lenses, I have to use an auxiliary viewfinder instead of the viewfinder in the Xpan.

I know Hasselblad purists will find using the Samyang lens on an XPan disgusting, so I apologize in advance.

Dealing with distortion

As with many ultra-wide angle lenses and panoramic cameras, particularly rotating lens cameras such as the Widelux and Horizont, the photographer has to be particularly careful with where the horizon (or a horizontal line such as a road or fence) in the photo is placed.

One also has to be careful not to tilt the camera up or down if they want to avoid massive distortion — keeping the camera as level as possible.

But if you keep the camera level, and watch lines and the horizon carefully, most distortion can be lessened or eliminated.

For these photos I used Ilford Delta 100 film and then scanned the negatives on a Bowens Illumitran.

Black Mesa, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Northern New Mexico

Descanso (roadside cross) and Black Mesa, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Northern New Mexico

An addition to my Road to Pedernal (Cerro Pedernal) series. Highway 96 near the Abiquiu Dam in Northern New Mexico

Descanso (roadside cross) and Black Mesa, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Northern New Mexico

Early morning, Abiquiu Dam, Northern New Mexico

Early morning, Chama River overlook, Abiquiu Valley. Notice the interesting sunstar the Samyang fisheye produces at f8

Graffiti on disused building. Medanales, Rio Arriba County, Northern New Mexico

Cabezon Peak and Highway 550 between Bernalillo and Cuba, New Mexico

Semi with strange tubular cargo on Highway 550 in New Mexico

Sunrise over the Sandia Mountains from Tramway Blvd / Sandia Pueblo, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Tree shadow on abandoned building, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Cerro Pedernal and the Canones Creek canyon that flows into the Abiquiu Dam. Rio Arriba County, Northern New Mexico.

Breakfast with one of my grandsons, the Daily Grind, Albuquerque, New Mexico. This image illustrates how one needs to be careful with horizontal lines to avoid, or in this case, to show the fisheye lens' distortion.