Looking at old tech (although in this case, actually relatively recent tech) has drawbacks when it opens up a new level of obsession…
I naturally gravitate towards wide-angle lenses and have been playing around with multi-image stitches recently to get wider, more detailed images, but after watching Kai use a Hassleblad Xpan in this video, I found that the aspect ratio of a dual 35mm film frame was very, very attractive.
Viewing Matthew’s site of Xpan images just cemented this view, but at £800-ish on eBay for just the body, plus the cost of the film, there’s no way I was going to go down that particular rabbit hole – what I wanted was 3:1 ratio crop on a digital body. Reading a bit further it was fairly easy to find the 35mm full-frame equivalent focal lengths of the Xpan lenses, and my current Canon 6D lens set covers the equivalents so I have the gear, but not the framing guide.
Magic Lantern is the answer to this particular problem: I created a 3:1 mask from the Cinescope (2.35:1) default, and then added a focal reminder with the 35mm FF equivalents above the frame, and the Xpan ones below, like this:
The hardest part was getting the RLE and palette correct, but if anyone else fancies messing around with this framing/picture style, then feel free to grab this 720×480 BMP and give it a go.
