[Leica] going off the deep end, buying another film camera

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

>Henning
>The XPan is certainly a good choice for handheld panorama 
>photography - but who makes that without tripod? The XPan format is 
>finally quite smaller than with 6x9 and upward. Another option 
>between XPan and 4"x5" would be a Brooks or Plaubel Verwide - 6x9 
>format, 47mm Angulon, "compact" body, "affordable" price (Brooks 
>around $1k, Plaubel a bit more, usually).
>Didier

I've done a lot of shooting with the Xpan, Horizon, Widelux, Noblex, 
and yes, even the Cambo Wide handheld. If you have a decent bubble 
level, you can do about as well handheld as on a tripod in good light 
and more importantly capture stuff that would disappear if you had to 
haul out the tripod. And you can get some very interesting stuff with 
the Roundshot handheld if you _don't_ level it.

The Veriwide and the Plaubel aren't really Very Wide in todays terms, 
and not particularly panoramic. The Cambo Wide, although a fair bit 
bulkier than those two offers a lot more options and isn't really any 
more expensive. The shift capability is better than that of the 
Plaubel, and of course you can put a variety of lenses and backs on 
it. The 'body' of the Cambo cost less than $200 when new, and the 
main cost was the lens in focussing mount. 6x9 backs are cheap, and 
even 6x12 backs aren't bad.

I've shot with both the Veriwide (with the slightly modified Leica 
21mm finder!) and the Plaubel. The Veriwide I really didn't care for, 
and when the Plaubel came out I already had a Cambo Wide which was 
cheaper, so the Plaubel didn't make much sense at the time.

There's also the Horseman 6x12 in it's variations. Probably the most 
versatile camera combining roll film capability and interchangeable 
lenses along with relative compactness. But not cheap.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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