Michael Westmoreland
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Leicester, United Kingdom
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A PANORAMIC
VIEW
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y M I C H A E
L W E S T M O R E L A N D
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360º view of Picadilly Circus, 8" x 32" transparency from
#8 Cirkut camera.
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Michael Westmoreland is a specialist
panoramic photographer who has been making innovative extended images for
prestigious clients for many years. A recent photomural commission for
such a client involved a single image at 150 times linear
enlargement.
All techniques...rotational, linear,
digital, peripheral. All subjects from giant scenics to car
interiors...Polaroids...50ft+ mast photography...Quick 360 shots for VR.
And now...digital linear reconstructions open up hitherto unphotographable
subjects, eg. streets, arcades, galleries etc.
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Leadenhall Market, London. Digital Linear
Reconstruction
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Parkhead Stadium, Glasgow. For Glasgow Celtic
FC
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Below Mike gives an insight into
his film and processing techniques for his Cirkut cameras.
I have been cutting, spooling and processing
aerofilm 91/2 by 250 ft rolls colour transparency and B/W for 30 years for
my 5,6,8 and 10 inch Cirkuts. When I
started there was no other option except to buy large quantities of readymade
Cirkut spooled B/W film at horrendous prices which I couldnt afford and no
useable colour film at all.
Glad to hear there are still so many new people
taking an interest in using these amazing old contrivances so am happy to answer
any queries re techniques. I dont look at my emails everyday so phoning might
sometimes be better (UK-116-2705828; butpleaseremember the time
difference for Europe!). here are a few notes for newcomers:
In brief, I have my own one-piece spools made from
hardwood dowel, turned down to give a centre spindle and end flanges
these ends are then drilled and grooved to fit the camera rewind. I allow 1/16
inch end play on the film when making spools (essential to avoid banding).
Lengthwise cutting done on an old wallpaper cutting
machine which I bought at scrap price; a simple homemade alternative using
a razor blade is described by Will Landon in a backnumber of IAPP journal.
Believe it or not Bob Erickson cuts colour film rolls in two with a woodsaw in
the light; providing the film is tightly wound on a lightproof spindle: he
reckons it only fogs a couple of turns plus the very edge of the film (this wont
work with black and white though ).
I was lucky to acquire some proper yellow/black
leader paper rolls from a film manufacturer many years ago so cant advise an
alternative but there must be something (sugar paper perhaps?). A rotary
trimmer is essential to cut right-angles on both film and paper, and a simple
jig to hold them in alignment for joining with paper tape.
All processing done in 5 ft troughs, rolling the
film continuously. Cant help with the colour film, mine is the entire
world stock of an obsolete Agfachrome 29 years out of date and kept mint fresh
in a very deep freeze all that time.
I make up my own chemistry. . The B/W I use is
Ilford FP3 Aero. My favourite option is to cut it exactly in half to
4 3/4 inch, no waste at all.I also sometimes use 220 and 70mm
film.
I make Cibachrome and B/W contact prints with a
travelling colourhead light source and can supply details of this mechanism on
request. (Most oldtime Cirkut users designed their own individual solution to
the contact printing problem ). Prints are processed on an Ilford ICP 42
machine which can also handle colour neg paper.
Favourite cameras are the portable 6-inch model
Cirkuts (not outfits) which I have adapted to use many lenses from 65mm Super
Angulon to 24-inch Turner Reich."
Building a 20" x 16" colour enlarger
reproduced from IAPP journal Dec 93
by
Mike Westmoreland
When IAPP member Fred Yake from Las Vegas
visited me in England last year he was intrigued by my self built 20" x 16"
colour enlarger, and this led to some wider discussion at Bar Harbour. It
emerged that a number of members had considered treading this path but recoiled
at the apparently formidable problems of expense and technology. As it did not
cost me a fortune (less than $500) it seems worth sharing my experience.
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It has to be admitted at the outset that the basis of my monster
gadget was a cheap and very substantial ready made find. Several decades
ago an English company manufactured a very large horizontal copy/process
camera for the graphic arts market called the Barcro. This was supplied
with it's own railway, multi compartmental copyboard and lighting. It
had a number of accessories, sophisticated backs, point source
lampholders, vacuum frames, blowers, etc. etc. Reprographic technology
moved on a pace over a quarter of a century and in due time these
behemoths came to be worth little more than scrap. I picked up the Barcro
and a number of backs ten years ago for approximately $150 and reluctantly
declined the railway, copyframe, lights etc. as I didn't have the space
(not if I wanted to stay married). Having only a modest 20' x 8' darkroom
in my house, it was necessary to build a metal trolley so that the
whole caboodle could be manoeuvered and put in a corner when not in use.
it would be nice to have some tramcar rails set in the floor to give
perfect geometry, but this would be impractical in my present setup. The
whole thing has to be carefully adjusted for square on each occasion and
this takes more time than anything else.
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Mike with his enlarger
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My main problems in adapting this as a usable
colour enlarger for Cirkut or rollfilm originals were as follows:
A.Identifying and building an enlarger
illumination source.
B.Devising a colour filtration system.
C.Adapting one of the backs as a negative
carrier.
D.Finding a suitable lens to cover a 20 inch
field.
When pondering about an illumination source
and filters I handicapped myself unduly at first thinking along the lines of
what I already had. The 10" x 8" Trilite head which I own is much too
sophisticated, with it's computerised controls and automatic filtration
adjustment for lamp ageing, but the old Agfaheads (which can now be picked up
very cheaply) are much more suitable. I visualised a whole row of them behind a
single diffuser. What I had forgotten in 20 years of subtractive printing
is that there's a simple alternative. Eventually the penny dropped; I spent
about $20 on three RGB 4 inch coloured gels, and went down the additive route.
For those not familiar with the technique, articles on it are easy to find (I
found it in the Focal Encyclopedia). The gels must be of optical quality
(nothing to worry about there, we all use such gels in front of the camera lens)
and the three exposures must be done without moving (or even touching) the
enlarger. I constructed a gel holder wheel on an adjustable floor stand
which is usually placed about half an inch in front of the enlarger,
rotating between each exposure. The technique can be used equally well with
either positive or negative originals. The light source is quite straight
forward; I built a large diffuser box full of ordinary Photocrescenta enlarging
bulbs. This does of course get very hot, so it needed a light tight
baffle ventilation and a good blower. I use the one from my 10/8 head,
but I dare say an old vacuum cleaner could have been cannibalised. I
also made an adapter so that the 10/8 head can be used for smaller sizes.
The negative carrier took about a week to
construct. The film length it can accommodate is 20 inches, and this is kept
flat between two pieces of hinged glass. I made two sliding and locking
horizontal masks, adjustable between 10 inches and 35mm strips. Light baffled
slots at the side of the carrier allow long lengths off film to hang out, and
the spare is wound on to a pair of old winders from an overhead projector. The
diffusing box can slide backwards out of the way, as I prefer to remove the
carrier for each "frame" and position the film over a separate lightbox on the
bench. This makes for greater accuracy and avoids scratching.
Finally, the glassware I purchased was a
635mm Cooke Apo Process lens for 75 dollars. Sometime I would like to aquire a
wide angle Graphic Claron, as the Cooke only allows me about a
3X enlargement in the present situation.
The biggest initial problem was focusing, the
image being simply too dim on the wall to assess sharpness. Use of a focussing
neg is really too cumbersome for a number of reasons, and I even tried
binoculars (it doesn't work!). The solution was to install a small 60-1 motor to
drive the long lead screw which moves the lens standard in and out. A long
flexible cable from this attaches to a toy train controller which I hold in one
hand while looking through a grain focuser pressed against the wall.
That's more or less it. To do likewise,
you must of course either find or build a basic framework. Before I aquired the
Barcro, I was going to adapt another simpler gadget which the University I
worked for in those days. It was a relic from the Graphics Design Department, a
vertical floorstanding framework woth copyboard, lights, bellows and ground
glass which was used for manipulating artwork (these were subsequently made
obsolete by the later generation of PMT machines around 1980). I seem to
remember the ground glass went up to 24" x 20", but I don't imagine the lens
provided would have been good enough for high quality enlarging. There
must still be some of these frames around.
In passing, like many others I did consider
at one time the scanning enlarger, working like the camera in reverse. Back in
1975, I made a prototype which worked with 35mm and 120 negs; what I did
was to adapt a 4 x 5 Beseler enlarger. The Beselers have carriers called
Negatrans which incorporate moving friction bands on the rebates of the
film and these were easily adaptable to a small motor and gearbox. I then built
a motorised paper box for the base and achieved approximate synchronization with striated focusing
negatives and paper. An engineering student made me some prototype drawings for a full sized version
for 9 1/2 inch aerofilm, but I never carried it through as I couldn't afford
it and I wasn't really convinced there was likely to be
any worthwhile commercial spinoff anyway.
Mike's Contact Printer
Everybody who uses Cirkut cameras needs to make contact prints.
Most people devise their own equipment for this
This is my solution
I made a hinged contact frame 90 inch by 12 inch approx
The top is heavy duty glass; the bottom half is chipboard covered with soft plastic foam.
The neg or tranny is taped with translucent tape to the underside of the glass in the light and
the printing paper is placed on the foam in darkness before closing the frame.
This frame sits on a Benchtop 11 ft by 2 ft 3in
Sitting on the bench and surrounding the contact frame is a Wooden rectangular framework
3in by 2in section and 130 inches long by 25 inches wide .
Attached to the top of each long side is a metal rail.
At one end of the bench is a metal framework which has a flanged wheel at each corner;
this framework sits astride the rails and can travel the length of the bench.
Attached to the top of the framework is an old enlarger with colour head, minus baseboard.
The function of this is simply to provide a travelling rectangle of light down on to the bench.
The strength of this light can be modified via the lens iris, and the colour head provides whatever filtration is needed.
The whole thing is encased in a black cloth shroud which minimises spill light, reflections etc for the duration
of the exposure, which can be several minutes in length
At the other end of the bench is mounted a small DC Meccano motor and 60-1 gearbox.
This spins a worm gear which drives a small drum;
wound around this is a long piece of string which is hooked up to the travelling lightsource
when the exposure is ready to be made.
AC current runs to the motor via a toy train controller/transformer which allows the speed of
the pull to be modified to different speeds.
In several respects it could be said to mimic the operation of the camera.
It might sound complex but it looks like a simple and unbeautiful bodge of comic engineering which might last for the next ten minutes. It has been running without trouble for nearly 30 years and still uses the same piece of string.
contact info
358 Victoria Park Road
Leicester LE2 1XF
England
t/f
+44 (0)116 270 5828
mobile +44 (0)7967 122 940
email michael@westmoreland.demon.co.uk
all images copyright © 2001
Michael Westmoreland