Tag Archives: panorama

Panoramic photographs: the Number 8 Cirkut Outfit

Posted on June 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Part of an occasional series on the W.J. Moore panoramic photographs.

We have previously featured W.J. Moore’s panoramic photography and his life.  Here’s a look at the type of panoramic camera and film he used and some of the unusual features of the photographs it produced.

The best-known and most widely used of the rotating-film panoramic cameras was the Cirkut camera. Capable of shooting a 360° view, it was patented in 1904 and sold until the 1940s. It was not easy to use, and so was purchased mainly by commercial photographers. Some photographers shoot with well-maintained Cirkut cameras today.

Cirkut camera with film and accessories. Photographer: Henry Tabbers.

Cirkut Outfit

There were six distinct cameras in the Cirkut family to fit five different sizes of film. Four of the cameras were used exclusively for panoramas; two were built to be used with either panorama film or glass plate negatives. These last two versatile cameras were referred to as Cirkut Outfits. Continue reading →

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New photography exhibition – Vancouver’s Village 2008-2011 by Leslie Hossack

Posted on January 5, 2012 by | Leave a comment

On exhibit from January 12 to April 13 will be Vancouver’s Village 2008-2011: constructing a village, creating a community, a collection of photographs by Leslie Hossack documenting the construction of the Olympic Village on Southeast False Creek.

Eleven Cranes, Olympic Village Site Looking East, Vancouver 2008 by Leslie Hossack.

The village in Leslie Hossack’s photographs has evolved, over the four years she has photographed it, from a flock of construction cranes to an avenue of shiny buildings. Continue reading →

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Photographer William John Moore

Posted on October 20, 2011 by | 4 Comments

Part of an occasional series on the W.J. Moore panoramic photographs.

Very few Vancouver photographers had revolving panoramic cameras. Here’s a look at the career of the man who produced the panoramic photographs we’ve featured on flickr.

W. J. Moore was born in 1887 in Bryson, Quebec, one of eleven children of James and Elizabeth Moore. The family moved to De Winton, Alberta when Moore was in his early teens. By 1911 he had found work with commercial photographer Byron Harmon in Banff, Alberta. Harmon married Moore’s older sister Maude in 1907 and it is quite possible that Moore received his early photographic training from him.


Moore, his parents and several brothers and sisters settled in South Vancouver and Burnaby in 1912. Vancouver was then in the midst of an economic boom, but in 1913 it became a depression. Continue reading →

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The Moore Panorama Digitization Project

Posted on March 1, 2011 by | 4 Comments

First in an occasional series on the W.J. Moore panoramic photographs.

Thanks to funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program, we’ve just completed a project to digitize 399 panoramic photographs by W.J. Moore.

Panoramic photographs are defined as being at least twice as wide as they are high. The format was popular for group photographs of teams and at conferences or other gatherings, and because it captured the breadth of landscape views in one unbroken image.

Stock parade at the Vancouver Exhibition at Hastings Park, 1915

Stock parade at the Vancouver Exhibition at Hastings Park, 1915. Item # PAN N80.

The Vancouver Exhibition was later renamed the Pacific National Exhibition. Click through the image above to see what it looked like before mini-donuts, the roller coaster, and the Prize Home.

The original negatives are huge. They were taken in the first half of the 1900s with a No. 8 Cirkut Outfit camera, which produced negatives 8 inches high and up to 8 feet long. It’s a demanding format, but Moore had the skill and experience necessary to produce excellent photographs.  Continue reading →

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