[Leica] OT: Curved film planes in 35mm camera

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 6:56 PM -0700 6/16/04, Martin Krieger wrote:
>The new Konica Film-In Superwide one time use camera, 17mm lens, has 
>a curved film plane horizontally. The images are quite good (it has 
>800 speed film Konica color negative film in it). Are there any 
>other cameras you know of that have tried this? I assume that the 
>trick is that the image plane is in fact not so flat given the 
>simple lens, and hence the curving of the film plane makes up for 
>that.
>
>MK

It has been tried a couple of times before, particularly for 
wideangle cameras, but it is of limited use as the film really needs 
to be curved in two directions for the concept to work at its best. 
The Konica with the 17mm lens is a panoramic format, so the fact that 
it doesn't curve in the other direction is not as important. Also, it 
is a very short focal length lens of small aperture covering a small 
image circle, so the depth of field covers the other dimension.

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