The Zenit Horizon 202 Panoramic Film Camera
This was supposed to be a ‘Gearing Up For The Crappy Commie Camera Party’ post, but I quickly discovered that the Zenit Horizon 202 panoramic film camera was not a Soviet-era camera, and so is not CCCP compliant. I guess that the prominent stamp ‘Made in Russia’ should have been a bit of a giveaway, but digging into the history of the Horizon 202 suggests that it was launched in 1993, a few years after the Berlin Wall came down.
Still, it’s one of those cameras that I’ve always wanted but never ever expected to get. I have a Horizont, the earlier panoramic camera, but this has flaws that make it difficult to use (I will persevere with this one, mind. I hate to let a camera beat me, and besides, the Horizont is CCCP compliant). Of course, it was in the ‘Not Passed’ category of the Kamerastore website, with ‘flaws that will affect typical use,’ but since this was because it couldn’t ‘be tested with our machinery,’ but it was ‘in good condition and seems to be working normally,’ I thought it was worth investing in.
Like its predecessors, the Zenit Horizon 202 is a fixed focus swing-lens panoramic camera. It takes 35mm film that is loaded by wrapping the film around its curved innards, and each frame is 24x58mm, so you should get approximately 22 images from each 36-exposure roll of film. Although it has a plastic body, the innards are metal, and the Horizon 202 weighs a hefty 700g.
It’s not the easiest camera to use, or to grip, since holding the Horizon 202 as you would normally hold a camera results in the wide 120° field of view picking up fingers on the front of the device. Besides, the shutter button is towards the back of the camera, near the humongous viewfinder. So for that reason it’s best held by a handle below — or in my case a mini-tripod — with one hand, and then pressing the shutter button with the other.
The Horizon 202 has a limited range of shutter speeds in two ‘zones’ which are toggled by a little lever next to the rewind knob. There’s 1/2s, 1/4s, and 1/8s (yellow zone), and 1/60s, 1/125s, and 1/250s (white zone).You can (and should) only change the aperture and shutter speed when the shutter is cocked, and the Horizon 202 helps with this by only showing the tabs to change the shutter speed and aperture when the shutter has been locked.
The lens of the Horizon 202 is a 28mm f2.8 fixed aperture lens, and when the aperture is ‘set’ what it actually does is widen or close the slit that exposes the film to light as the whole lens assembly swings from one side of the film to the other. The idea is that as the lens assembly rotates it exposes the film equally across the whole frame. In practice, what happens is that at slower shutter speeds the lens assembly will take several seconds to completely rotate, so in these instances it is probably best mounted on a tripod. At fast shutter speeds, though, the lens whips around with a pleasing whirr.
Last week, storm Nuria passed (it’s April and we’re already into the ‘Ns’ for storm names, can you believe) and the skies cleared for a few days. I had a film to collect from the lab so took the opportunity for a morning out in Aveiro with a couple of film cameras. One was the ‘Golden Wonder’, the half-frame Welta Penti II that I’m using for the Frugal Film Project, and the other was, of course, the Horizon 202. In the Welta I used a previously loaded canister of Harman Phoenix, and in the Horizon I loaded a roll of pre-production Harman Red film that Harman Technology were kind enough to send me.
Loading the Horizon 202 is quite tricky. With the Horizont I’ve never actually successfully loaded a film without tearing it, though I have been practising and I’m getting much better. With the Horizon 202 loading the film is very similar, with the film being pushed under the roller next to the 35mm cassette, fed across the circular film gate, and pushed under the wind-on spindle. It’s important to keep the film tight as you load it into the take-up spool since any loose film will most like wrap itself around the wind-on spindle and tear or jam the film.
As soon as the film is loaded, close the rear door and wind on the film by firing off a couple of frames. The camera is now ready to use. I was dropped off near the hospital in Aveiro, which is close to my favourite footbridge, the wonderful metal structure in the Parque Infante Dom Pedro. Also in the park is the bandstand that is a regular fixture of my walks around Aveiro and for the first time, I thought I would try a vertical panorama (a vertorama?) Of the tower to one side of the park.
From the Parque I took a walk down to the canals near the centre of Aveiro, and then down to the Yacht Club. From there I walked to the circular footbridge, known in Aveiro as the Ponte do Laço, before heading for the railway station and the journey home. On the way I finished off the film with more views of the canal and the Forum shopping centre, before unloading the camera and dropping the film at the lab.
When the images arrived in my email less than 24 hours later, I was absolutely thrilled with the redscale images from the not-CCCP compliant Horizon 202. Yes, there was banding on some, and others looked a little funny, but on the whole they were awesome. I assume that the not flat horizons were mainly because it was difficult to keep the bubble in the centre of the measure as I was hand-holding the Horizon 202 using my mini tripod as a handle. However, the vertoramas came out perfectly straight. Much better than I had expected.
I’ve posted the whole roll in an album on my Flickr, light leaks and all, if you want to see the rest of the images. In conclusion, I was really happy how the Harman Red redscale film came out. I must admit, I was a quite nervous that I might break the film, especially when a small piece of film with a couple of sprocket holes fell out of the camera as I was trying to load it. I’m really encouraged with these result, though, and I’m already thinking that the next roll will be some Lomochrome Turquoise.
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Kodak Gold Ultra 400 (expired 2007)
ATENÇÃO!
