Got my hands on a 617 medium format panoramic camera. Its a Gaoersi 617 . Its built like a Chinese tank! Not as pretty as Linhof 617 , but at 1/8th of the price do you really care? But the glass is German, Grandagon-N 90mm 6.8. Its interchangeable with most large format lenses using their 'cones'. The camera is heavy, painfully slow to reload, and the viewfinder is not that accurate (its a 'ballpark' finder). Focusing is done by guessing the distance and turning the ring to the proper distance. You only get 4 shots per roll of 120. So most of the time you're reloading the camera... Did I tell you that its a pain to reload? So noticing its poor handling characteristic of this camera, I thought it would be perfect for street photography. Some would say I'm smoking crack. Your typical pano shooters are obsessed with getting things leveled, and they love their tripod. I could understand why. but I wanted to use this camera in a way I wanted to. Hand-held, l
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