I came across this camera while browsing on Allegro (Polish Ebay) a few weeks back and it immediately caught my eye with how different and interesting it looked. After doing a quick search for information and images made from the camera, I knew I had to have it and placed my bid.
Luckily, nobody else was paying too much attention to it and after winning the auction, the camera arrived just as described. Better in fact. A little old smelling, but super clean and came with the original case as well. I think someone must have had this in the closet for the last 30-40 years because it has no real signs of wear on it.
The next step was figuring out how to operate it, load it and then to test it. The camera is actually pretty easy to operate and has 3 shutter speeds, 1/30s, 1/60s, 1/125s and it seems that there is also 1/250s with a dot next to the last speed, it has 6 stops, f2.8 to f16. Pretty straightforward once you understand how the wheel mechanism works. Loading it was a little different and after getting this roll of film back I see now that I loaded it incorrectly causing some flare on the left part of the frame and blur on the right where the film lifted a bit. Still, the images are very impressive and now that I know how to properly load it, I am excited to burn some more film with it!
The camera itself is a 120° panorama shooting 35mm film with a 28mm fixed focal lens. It was manufactured by KMZ in Russia, better known for their Zenit cameras. Its heavy for its size but the weight makes it feel solid. You can read about them here: HORIZONT.
I love shooting with this and the results are better than I imagined. I must pay better attention to how I hold it so that my fat fingers don’t appear in the frames, which happened a few times in some of the shots. I am looking forward to many adventures and more cinematic stories to tell with this one.
Here are some images from an afternoon wandering around with it and a roll of Rollei RPX 100. Although not “perfect” I love the randomness of how they worked out!
Enjoy!
Erik Witsoe 