Images shot on Kodak Tri-X 400 in the Lomography Sprocket Rocket
One of my favourite cameras I’ve owned, used, played with, created with, pissed about with, call it what you want, is the Lomography Sprocket Rocket. Usually without the film mask in, which is something we’ll get to later.
For the uninitiated, the Sprocket Rocket lets you shoot panoramic images with the sprocket holes along the top and bottom of them. It does this by using two frames’ worth of film for each image and using the full height of the film too.
If you’re the particularly observant type though, you may have noticed these shots here, whilst being panoramic, don’t feature any sprocket holes at all. If you want to see some from this camera that do, my set from Nottingham was a personal favourite. Or you can check out all the previous Sprocket Rocket posts here.
As for these, read on to see why the sprocket holes are absent here, why I shot them like this, and my general thoughts on the whole thing too.
Contents
Taking away a camera’s signature feature
The reason the images here don’t have any sprocket holes in them is that the Sprocket Rocket comes with a film mask that you can insert before loading your film.
This blocks out the top and bottom of the film – the bits that normally get those sprocket holes – to give you narrower shots without them.
I’ve seen people comment on this elsewhere, with sentiments along the lines of it’s a bit pointless.
If you’re buying a Sprocket Rocket, a camera specifically designed for you to shoot photographs with sprocket holes in them, a camera with the word sprocket right there in the name, why would you want to add a film mask that means you don’t get them?
I can see their point. But I also don’t fully agree.
It’s better to have the option than not
One of the main rules I have for everything I write for this site is to keep things positive. There’s too much negativity in the world in general, and there definitely is in online photography communities.
So yes, you could say adding a film mask so you don’t get any sprocket holes in the photographs from your Sprocket Rocket is a daft thing to do.
But I could say that you don’t have to do it. Nobody is forcing you. You could shoot 100 rolls in your Sprocket Rocket and never use that film mask once.
I would completely understand if you never did.
But at least by Lomography spending the pennies to get them made and included in the box, you have the option. And I think that’s better than not having it.
If you’re reading this, which you are, my reason for using the film mask on this roll was a little bit meta. I simply needed to try it out so I could write about my experience with it.
That said though, I do quite like the results I got with it. They remind me of some of those I got with the Reto Pano.
That’s another camera that can give you panoramic images by blanking off the top and bottom of the shot. The difference there is that it uses the normal one frame per image, whereas the Sprocket Rocket uses two.
You can get 36 panoramic images from a 36-exposure roll in the Reto Pano, but only 18 from the Sprocket Rocket. Doubling up in the latter does mean more resolution in your images though, all things being equal in your scanning and whatnot.
Wrapping up these non-sprocket hole Sprocket Rocket shots
I’ll be honest here. I didn’t go out with the Sprocket Rocket on this day with the aim of coming home with the best photographs I could have shot.
As mentioned, I just had to shoot a roll with this film mask in so I could talk about it here. I took it to Mansfield, which is a place I really can’t keep going to and expecting to get different pictures from. I’ve written about that before too.
But it was at least a sunny day, which meant I could whip around and point this camera at whatever shapes I thought might look good on monochrome film in that light.
The aim of the day was simply to get the roll shot. But I will say I think some of the shots came out better than what I deserved from such a blithe effort.
I think that comes from a couple of things. The quality of Kodak Tri-X 400 film. And the visual novelty of having panoramic images.
They might not be technically impressive, but they do make an impression. Film mask in or not. 🙂
If you enjoyed that post shooting the Sprocket Rocket without any sprocket holes, why not have a look at some of these other film photo essays too:
And if you think others will find this post worth a read, help them find it by giving it a share 🙂
