Photographer makes use of a legendary retro panoramic movie digicam with a “swinging” lens to seize band at Abbey Road Studios

Panoramic cameras are usually used for broad landscapes, however one photographer repurposed a legendary panoramic digicam with a transferring lens to file a hip disco-rock band on movie. At the Photography & Video Show 2026, I met a photographer who used a legendary panoramic movie digicam to {photograph} a band on the equally legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, England.

Chris Lombardi, a London-based photographer and self-proclaimed “film nerd”, used the Widelux panoramic swing-lens digicam to snap The Great Leslie throughout a recording session at Abbey Road.

I met Lombardi on the Vintage Camera Hut stand on the present earlier this week, and he gave me the lowdown on how the Widelux works and shared his images from the band shoot, which I now have the privilege of sharing right here.

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The Widelux is a swing-lens panoramic movie digicam that was launched within the Nineteen Fifties by Japanese agency Panon Camera Shoko. It grew to become recognized for its distinctive design that includes a rotating f/8 lens that achieves a 126-degree discipline of view for cinematic-style pictures

This unconventional digicam was initially produced for 120 medium format movie, however in 1958 its creators rolled out the Widelux F1 for 35mm. On 35mm movie, the Widelux creates a 24x59mm picture exposing the movie by means of a slit which allows creatively distorting frames – which Chris took full benefit of at Abbey Road.

As if using this retro panoramic shooter at Abbey Road Studios, of all places, wasn’t cool enough, the actor Jeff Bridges is now bringing the camera back decades after it went out of production.