Panorama Postcards, Part 2
Here are more postcards from the scarce set of early panoramas. See the first part here!
This is an amazing photo, because we are on a Jungle Cruise boat, and yet we are looking through a time warp at ourselves in the future as we pass the front side of water! Incredible! Or it might just be another boat. See that skull on the pole to our left? I generally try to avoid neighborhoods that have skulls on poles. One of my rules.
I know that it looks like this skipper is shooting a hippo, but he was actually shooting at a vampire bat that was attacking the poor defenseless fella. Thanks, skipper!
Since I am an unabashed Tomorrowland enthusiast, it should come as no surprise that this is my favorite postcard in the entire set. I believe that in the wonderful book, "Disneyland: The Nickel Tour", they say that nothing in this photo exists anymore, and I would say that they are mostly correct... except for the Autopia. I'll admit that the Autopia you see today looks totally different from the one in this picture though... maybe that's what they meant.
This is a great, unusual view of Town Square as seen from the top of the Opera House. How do they take such wide-angle photos with no apparent lens distortion? Seriously! I'd love to see a similar photo from today. Notice that the Disneyland Band is at the base of the flag pole, performing for just a few people.
Stay tuned for the third and final installment!
9 comments:
Awsome cards!! But, then again, I'm a little biased.
Great, great stuff! I'm amazed Autopia still looks so barren in the landscaping department. Am I the only one who thought the original track layout was more fun than the current one?
I never did understand why they messed with the Autopia layout. Sometimes (or most times) they should just leave things alone!
Fantastic collection, Major!
Major, I wonder if that last panorama of Main Street was shot with some type of cylinder lens. These magnify or compress in one direction (right to left) but leave the other (top to bottom) uncompressed.
Concerning the wide angle lens. I still am using the old style cameras that uses 35mm film. For my Nikon cameras I have a 24 mm wide angle lens. This pic looks like it was shot with a 24 or perhaps 20 mm wide angle lens. The distortion lies in the fact that the City Hall and the Emporium look a lot further away then they actually are in person. However, this is the price you pay in order to try and get as much in the picture as possible with a wide angle lens. Are lenses available that can replicate this picture. Yes. Very much so, but you won't find it on those little point and shoot digital cameras.
Depending on the lens used, there's a possibility that there was plenty of distortion around the edges of the original camera negative or transparency. If the photographer used a near-fish-eye lens, he would have captured all of this image, plus a lot of the sky and street below that would have been cropped out during the printing process.
Too bad Thufer didn't notice the last one.
The Harvest House Coffee Shop sign is just barely visible in the lower right corner of the Main Street panorama.
Very interesting and offbeat pics, Major, thank you.
JG
so cool! :D
Thanks for the lens/camera info, Anonymous and Chuck! Katella, I think I've seen those cylinder lenses used for large crowd portraits (like high school class photos). Supposedly a kid could run from one end to the other and be in the photo twice.
Oh and Chuck, I considered the idea of cropping the photo, but I still think there would be some sort of curvature in the photo. Maybe not?
JG, you must mean the Maxwell House Coffee Shop?
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