Anybody like circular images?

[Oren Grad]

Emmet Gowin made some interesting round photos. I recall reading an article about him in View Camera magazine, and he said he used a 90mm Angulon on a 8x10 view camera.

IIRC, Bob Herbst used an 8x10 Hobo with 90mm Angulon for the round photos on this page:

http://www.bobherbst.com/structural_elements.html

[Oren Grad]

I do like circular images, and used to print them in the darkroom many years ago. But any time I've tried it in LF with a lens that vignettes on the format, I have been disappointed. No lens I've ever tried has a pleasant fall-off. I've always had to crop the image to considerably smaller than even the circular image projected by the too-short lens, which defeats the purpose and wastes more than half the film area. Better to simply vignette in-camera, in the darkroom, or photoshop.

Kerik Kouklis describes how he controlled the image boundary:

Kouklis had turned to the Korona to break out of a creative rut and loves the sweep of his images in the long, narrow format. But he is a highly charged photographer, always on the lookout for new ways of seeing and he wanted to try something that was as far from panoramic as possible. "The circle was an obvious choice," he says, "so I began making circular images with my 8x10" view camera, using a 135mm Nikkor lens that is not intended to cover the 8x10" format. It threw an image circle a bit larger than I needed so I added an old aluminum lens shade to the rear element to vignette the image to the size I wanted."

https://www.shutterbug.com/content/k...ent-way-seeing

As Jac posted above:

Some lenses have a mechanical barrier which abruptly vignettes rather than gently falling off. Big difference.

If your lens doesn't have such a barrier, and you want a sharper cutoff, add one!

[Myriophyllum]

Hi,

I like circular images.
Some of my microscope cameras are made for roundish images only.
Like the 1930s Zeiss Miflex, a 6.5/9cm plate camera used here:





Or using a 1980s camera with optics selected for circular images. An undocumented feature of the Zeiss MC63 camera. ;-)



More images and info here, if you like:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/136145...57686135321996

Best
Jens

[Jim Noel]

After following this thread it has me interested in making some circular images on 8x10. I can think of several methods using equipment I have on hand. Now all I Have to do is find an appropriate subject. My favorite model moved all the way to the East coast,so I will have to think of other types of appropriate subject matter.

[Grandpa Ron]

To me it is the photograph. How it is presented is immaterial.

Some photos can be enhance by an unusual presentation.