Panoramic photos of Turkey

[Ron Marshall]

Here is a link to some interesting panoramic photos of Turkey that I came across on the net:

http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/turkeycinemascope1.php?sid=1

[Scott Davis]

Those are terrific. It looks like most were shot with a Widelux or other swing-lens. It's interesting to see Turkey in winter, as that's a side of it you don't usually think of.

[Greg Lockrey]

I heard that it was a digital Seitz 617.

[Bill_1856]

Absolutely magnificant!

[tim atherton]

Now I'm going to have to find his films - which have photographers as the main protagonists...

[Colin Graham]

Wow, those are incredible. I wouldn't have thought that the format would lend itself so well to portraits. Very nice.

[Capocheny]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for sharing the site...

Great images... especially "Curved Street" and "Lake Mead."

Time to pull out the splitter for my 8x10 Dorff! :)

Cheers

[Ron Marshall]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for sharing the site...

Great images... especially "Curved Street" and "Lake Mead."

Time to pull out the splitter for my 8x10 Dorff! :)

Cheers

I am thinking to do the same with my 5x7.

[Hiro]

Now I'm going to have to find his films - which have photographers as the main protagonists...
The winter scenes of Istanbul reminded me of the film, Uzak (Distant), then I realized he's the director. The film is great, too.

[Greg Lockrey]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for sharing the site...

Great images... especially "Curved Street" and "Lake Mead."

Time to pull out the splitter for my 8x10 Dorff! :)

Cheers

Those "inspired" me also when I first saw them...bought a 6x17 back for my 4x5's.:)

[Capocheny]

I am thinking to do the same with my 5x7.

Hi Ron,

Not a bad idea... I'll have to dig through my boxes for them. Dagor77 sent me one back awhile ago but I've never thought to take them out into the field with me.

That sure IS an inspiring site.. Gotta love it! :)

Again, thanks for posting it.

Cheers

[Struan Gray]

I enjoyed looking at these when Conscientious (www.jmcolberg.com/weblog) highlighted them, but I am surprised at how much attention they are getting, given that they are deeply conservative in terms of their subject matter and composition. The soft digital colour and the panoramic aspect ratio seem to be giving viewers an excuse to indulge an otherwise politically-incorrect yearning for classical orientialism. Bump the saturation a tad, and crop to a more normal aspect ratio and you're back to the presentation of the pleasingly exotic that National Geographic does so well.

The exception is "Road by the Lake" on the final page, which does seem to be doing more than making the viewer feel a cosy tingle of wanderlust, and which doesn't have that advertising, film-still easy comprehensibility. I *like* the others, but as depictions of something that is interesting, not as acts of photography.

Kahn and Selesnick like to play games with the popularity of Ceylan-style photography. Although they can get a bit silly a times, they also provoke more thought. IMHO, of course.

http://www.kahnselesnick.com/ci_salt/city.htm

[Jim collum]

best work i've seen in a *long* time!!

thanks for the link

jim

[Henry Ambrose]

Odd man out here, I suppose.

Didn't the high level of post production give anyone else the willies? Just over the edge of too much HDR work? Surreal lighting effects that are just past the bounds of anything natural? My bounds anyway.

This style might work just fine in a movie but in stills it got old for me by the time I looked at half of them. Maybe before then. Still worth looking at I suppose but who really sees the world this way?

Most of these pictures seem carried by the effect rather than by content.

[Veríssimo Dias]

thanks for sharing

Veríssimo

[Terence McDonagh]

Holy mother of god, is this the thing he used?
http://www.slrtoday.com/articles/64/1/The-Seitz-160-Megapixel-D3-Digital-Camera/The-Seitz-160-Megapixel-D3

For just $38,000, this too can be yours . . .

[Chris Strobel]

I agree with Henry.These shots have been pp Dragan style.There are hundreds, maybe thousands of similar quality images over at photo.net that look like these linked photos, most shot with low end dslr's.Check out this guy at the link below.There are several tutorials I've found on the web for Dragan style pp if thats your cup of tea.Myself I enjoy straight photography in the style of West Coast f/64, etc..To each his own of course

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4634745&size=lg


Odd man out here, I suppose.

Didn't the high level of post production give anyone else the willies? Just over the edge of too much HDR work? Surreal lighting effects that are just past the bounds of anything natural? My bounds anyway.

This style might work just fine in a movie but in stills it got old for me by the time I looked at half of them. Maybe before then. Still worth looking at I suppose but who really sees the world this way?

Most of these pictures seem carried by the effect rather than by content.

[tim atherton]

Holy mother of god, is this the thing he used?
http://www.slrtoday.com/articles/64/1/The-Seitz-160-Megapixel-D3-Digital-Camera/The-Seitz-160-Megapixel-D3

For just $38,000, this too can be yours . . .

it does come with a little set of wheels so you can use it as a skateboard....

[Greg Lockrey]

Anybody strong enough to handle one of these, you ain't gonna mess with.:eek:

[Colin Graham]

I dont get the grips on this thing...How do you fire the shutter? With some other, erm, appendage?

[Vick Vickery]

Durn! I didn't even know it was Turkey season!!! :-) Nice job, Ron!

[Bill_1856]

The muted colors may be Draganian (a style description which is new to me), but the compositions are as beautifully perfect as a Cartier-Bresson. THAT's why they are so wonderful.

[C. D. Keth]

It's wonderful work. I wish he wouldn't call it cinemascope, though, because it is not. I'm probably the only person to care about that, though.

[Brian C. Miller]

I really like the compositions. Both Nuri Bilge Ceylon and Andrzej Dragan.

Also, Andrzej Dragan on photo.net (http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4271152), personal site (http://andrzejdragan.com)
"Some people claim that a good portrait will reveal some truth about the model. I'm undoubtedly sad to state that these people will not find anything interesting in my photography which has no such purpose." -- Andrzej Dragan

Agfa Portrait gave muted colors like this. Maybe Kodak Portra NC would be similar.

But I'm not inspired to rush out and buy a panoramic back. What am I missing about just cropping the film? Let's see, Kodak Portra at $1.80/sheet, that's 333 sheets vs a Shen-Hao back or 21,111 sheets vs that Seitz camera. (Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to do math comparisons, am I? Bad me! Bad me! I sentence myself to go and photograph with my 8x10.)

[Asher Kelman]

Who has any actual reference that a Seitz 6x17 camera was in fact used for the Turkey Panos?

I really doubt it. The pictures are just as likely scanned film!

Asher

[gmoizant]

hello ,

yes , beautiful picture
may be made with a simple apn 5MP , and post production with photomerge and of course photoshop , it's really obvious ,

Look at the first one : the street with snow on each edge , there are several mens ,

i think there is only 2 or 3 different but with copy and paste , you can have 15 ones ,

If you look the ones who are at the left corner with the grey umbrella : the two front legs are exactly in the same position and also the bottom side of the coat

At the photo number 10 , the shape of the shadow on the face of the first child :
what do you think about it ?

Photoshop or 120 roll film

thanks for your opinion

[Ted Harris]

I don't know about the Seitz 617 but they all look like swing lens or swing body cameras were used. The first shot looks very much like the effect you get with a Seitz when you set it to 180 or more degrees of rotation. I've used the camera and hated it. Right after I rented one for a week I went out and bought a Noblex.

[Bill_1856]

Many of these images were made several years ago. Was the Seitz camera even available then? Could these be frames from his movie cameras?

[Ted Harris]

I first used a Seitz some 7-8 years ago. I know they were around a number of years before that. IIRC thy were originally marketed by Alpa and that is going back at last 10 years. The reason I am so sure these were taken with either a swing body or swing lens camera is the field of view which, in a Noblex for example, is 145° equally that of human vision. This field of view is not obtainable any other way.

[tim atherton]

one of the articles I read about him mentioned the Seitz - whether it was used for all the shots I have no idea. A good few of them are definitely taken with a swing lens camera rather than a fake pano/slice camera...

[Greg Lockrey]

But I'm not inspired to rush out and buy a panoramic back. What am I missing about just cropping the film? Let's see, Kodak Portra at $1.80/sheet, that's 333 sheets vs a Shen-Hao back or 21,111 sheets vs that Seitz camera. (Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to do math comparisons, am I? Bad me! Bad me! I sentence myself to go and photograph with my 8x10.)

You can crop the film....

Or if you shoot a bunch of 120/220 rolls instead, you can farm these out to about any one hour lab if you don't want to hassle with the wet work. It's a little cheaper than half framing LF per image which most of the time you can't find a local lab to process your work anyway. (Nearest one to me is 20 miles, for example.)As far as the Seitz goes, that depends on your film costs per year. And some of that cost is the camera and lens also. It's all about priorities. Me, I purchased a 6x17 back (for $500) and I will be marrying it to my semi-retired Graphlex with a hope that I can make the range finder focus be adjusted to the accommodate the back extension. Slap a variable viewfinder...and I have a pretty functional hand held panoramic camera. If not, then it will be a view camera focus.:)

[tim atherton]

don't forget that the "slice up a larger format" panos take a picture that's not comparable like a swing lens pano

[Greg Lockrey]

don't forget that the "slice up a larger format" panos take a picture that's not comparable like a swing lens pano

Are there side by side comparisons that we could see? I realise that you can get to the 145 degree angle of view with one of those swing lens cameras. But what else is different?

[Ed Richards]

The perspective is very different because the lens points to each part of the horizon as it takes the picture, rather than seeing everything but the center obliquely. Ideally the film is also curved so you are projecting on a cylinder.

That said, you could do the same thing with software and a conventional photo, but the math is left as an exercise.

[Greg Lockrey]

I suppose that the camera being level is very important.