Quote Originally Posted by Anupam View Post
Sure. Cut up an extra darkslide thru the middle - so instead of a darkslide that covers a 4x5 piece of film you have one that covers 5x2. Now, when you want to shoot, take out the original darkslide from the holder and insert this one. So inside the holder only half of the film area is exposed and the other half is covered. Once done, take this out and insert the original darkslide again. If you want to expose the other half of the film, all you need to do is flip the cut slide to cover up the other half.

For composing, I even cut a piece of black mat board about 5x2.25 inches (even though about 2inches worth of film is exposed, I only count on 1.75 inches, leaving a quarter inch as a margin). I put it on the glass and only consider the visible part for composing. It is just like using a reducing back or a RF back. For every sheet, I first shoot the top portion and then the bottom - 2 shots a sheet. Takes a little organization not to get confused and double expose but it's not hard.

I hope this is clear, otherwise I can take some pictures of the setup with my cell phone and post them.

Anupam
I have used this method for 5X2, and like Goldfarb mentioned, I cut a 5X5 hole in the darkslide near one side to do the flipping for 2 on a 4X5 sheet. The best part of this is that on a loaded double darkslide film holder you get 4 panorama. I use rise and fall on the front standard to get the lens to center on each panorama, rather than the whole 4X5 sheet. On a monorail, I use rise and fall correspondingly on the front and rear standard.

If you are really proficient on this method, you can reset the camera to view a second adjacent panorama and overlap the frame slightly to come up the possibility of stitching the 2 negs/transparencies from one sheet to make a 2X9 inch panorama.

One other advantage given relatively same exposures, you can scan the two panoramas as one 4X5 and then separate them digitally.

Regarding the Chinese panorama backs. I've heard varying reports, some very good. However, the pricing seems a bit odd until you make the distinction that there are panoramic backs that ONLY do 6X12, and then there are backs that are multiformat, ie. 6X6, 6X7, 6X9 and 6X12 using masks and multiple red windows.

The dedicated 6X12 format backs are less expensive.