Shooting wide with Noble Design’s 6x17 Panoramic Film Camera
Introduction
In late 2023, I bought my first 6x17 panoramic film camera — the ND 6x17 by Noble Design. It’s a lightweight 3D-printed camera that shoots medium format film and uses a large format lens to capture stunning detail.
Panoramic became my favorite format in photography since getting this camera. No matter the subject, images always look cool in that wide cinematic aspect ratio.
In this post, I take a deep dive into the 6x17 format, the ND 6x17 camera, the pictures it takes, scanning the negatives, and compare it to the XPan. This is a long post, so feel free to skip around to the parts that interest you.
The format
This camera shoots 6x17. In reality, the exposed area measures closer to 5.6x17 — an aspect ratio slightly wider than 3:1. On the negative, that’s 5.6cm tall and 17cm wide. That’s *big* 😅. So big, in fact, that you only get four shots per roll of 120 medium format film. As you can imagine, you have to be very considerate with your compositions, make sure you meter well, and don’t skip any steps. Mistakes are costly, but when you nail the exposure, the results are spectacular.
The true magic happens when you shoot slide film. Placing a huge positive on a light table and taking a peek at all the glorious details through a loupe is a magical experience. And with slide film, there are no algorithms at play, no interpretations or conversions — just light from the lens captured on a piece of film, projected onto your eyeballs. It’s a must if you get a 6x17 camera. Try it at least once before Fuji & Kodak halt production entirely and it goes extinct.
If you like to share your images online, you should know that this format doesn’t lend itself well to Instagram and other social media. Instagram, for example, doesn’t allow aspect ratios this wide, so you have to add borders on the top and bottom to make a 6x17 image fit in a 1080-pixel square — that’s bordering on criminal if you ask me. Viewing these images on mobile (which most IG users will) leads to further disappointment, as they end up looking really insignificant on such tiny screens.
To really appreciate 6x17, you should print your images, study them on a light table, or at the very least view them on a big screen.
The camera
The ND 6x17 is a 3D-printed camera designed by Noble Design in England. It shoots medium format film through a large format 90mm lens, and uses your phone as a viewfinder. Apart from the viewfinder, it’s a fully mechanical camera.
Specs
| Price (body only) | £895.00 |
| Lens focal length | 90mm |
| Total weight (with lens) | 987g |
| Total weight (w/ lens + lens cover) | 1049g |
| Width | 26.2cm |
| Length | 16.1cm |
| Length (with lens cover) | 17.3cm |
| Height | 10cm |
| Shots per roll | 4 |
For a 6x17 camera, the ND 6x17 is incredibly light and compact, making it portable enough to hike with. If you’re traveling by air, you’ll be glad to know that it fits perfectly in a Pelican 1400 case, along with its accessories, which is just small enough to count as a “personal carry-on item” onboard flights on most airlines. It can fit comfortably in a backpack as well, if you prefer that.
The anatomy
Camera body
The most notable part of the ND 6x17 is the fact that it’s a 3D-printed camera. According to Noble Design, it’s printed using HP’s “Multi Jet Fusion Printing technology,” which produces high-end prints. You can tell it’s a quality print job, as the camera construction feels quite sturdy. It doesn't have visible print layers, like you typically see on objects printed on consumer 3D printers.
On the top of the camera, two water levels come pre-installed — one for horizontal leveling, and one for vertical tilt. Magnets are also fitted to hold the cable release and various top-mounted accessories, such as the phone holder, cold shoe, and even an optical viewfinder.
The camera back is secured firmly against the body with a latch, creating a completely light proof enclosure. There is no need for light seal foam, which means fewer points of failure and less maintenance.
On the camera back, there’s a little window that you can slide open to reveal the film’s paper backing. The window lines up perfectly with the frame numbers printed on the paper, so you know when to stop winding. Conveniently, the numbers you should stop on (1, 4, 7, 10) are embossed on the camera back, so you don’t have to worry about remembering these numbers.
Winding the film is as simple as rotating one of the two knobs on the bottom of the camera. There is no locking mechanism, so the film can be wound freely in either direction. These knobs are coupled to a spring loaded system that hold the film spool in place. You can simply pull on either knob to release the spool attached to it.
Also on the bottom is a tripod thread mount made of brass.
Lens
The ND 6x17 is designed to fit Schneider Super-Angulon 90mm f/8 and Nikon Nikkor SW 90mm f/8 lenses. Other lenses are not compatible with this camera, unfortunately. 90mm on a large-format lens feels quite wide, so it would be nice to have the option to go narrower, e.g. with a 120mm lens, but this is not possible due to how the camera was designed.
The lens is a large format lens, which is necessary to get a big enough image circle to fill the 6x17 frame. It is attached to the body via a helical focusing mount, which is what you use to adjust your focus.
The Schneider lens, which is the one I have, has a switch that you can flip to keep the lens wide open. On the Nikkor lens, this is the "T" position on the shutter speed dial. This allows light to enter the camera continuously, so you can view the projected image on the ground glass. However, since the lens only opens up to f/8, the image is very dim, especially in the corners. So it’s mostly useful for setting critical focus, but not much for composing.
Top mounts
The camera comes with a 3D-printed phone mount, which magnetically attaches to the top of the camera body where the shoe mount usually is. It can be adjusted to fit any size phone. This works surprisingly well. The phone feels secure in the holder, as long as you have a case on your phone. The holder uses friction to hold your phone in place, so a case-less phone is, in my experience, too slippery.
There exists a 3x cold shoe mount, which attaches magnetically in place of the phone mount. This allows for a third-party optical viewfinder installation, e.g. a viewfinder from the Fuji GX617, or even custom ones. As of right now, this option isn’t listed on Noble Design’s website, but Angus Noble of Noble Design told me the cold shoe mount could be purchased for an additional £25. I can't guarantee that it's still available, but you can ask.
Noble Design briefly sold modified optical viewfinders that attached magnetically to the camera body. I got my hands on one, but unfortunately there was a pretty glaring misalignment issue with my copy. I got a full refund, but sadly no replacement, as their supplier had stopped producing them. Oh well…
Accessories
For a whopping £95 extra, you can get a protective lens cover made from the same 3D-printed plastic as the main body. It’s designed to fit around the lens and lock to the camera body. It has a little protrusion with two holes in it, should you wish to tether it to something.
I opted to get this protective lens cover (though it was £75 at the time), and I’m glad I did. While the price definitely seems way too high for what is essentially just a piece of plastic, it does give me peace of mind knowing the lens won’t get damaged when I travel around with it. Annoyingly, it won’t fit with my tripod’s quick shoe attached.
You’ll want a cable release to operate this camera. Noble Design sells a modified JJC cable release that magnetically attaches to the camera body. At £15, I would recommend it, unless you already have a functioning cable release. The added magnet is a convenience, but certainly not a must-have.
Lastly, the ground glass/focusing screen, which is included with the camera purchase. It’s a piece of acrylic glass with one glossy side and one frosted side. It attaches — you guessed it — magnetically to the inside of the camera body, after which you can compose your shot and set your focus. The glossy side of the glass should be facing out towards you. If you've done large format photography before, you should know this already.
Shooting
While I have never shot traditional large format, I imagine shooting with the ND 6x17 is quite similar, except for the roll film. You place the camera on your tripod, whip out the ground glass or phone mount, compose and focus your shot, load the film, meter your scene, and finally take the picture.
It is possible to shoot with this camera handheld, if you dare. I have done it a few times, with mixed results. You need fast film to keep the shutter speeds reasonable, and steady hands to keep the horizon straight. It can be done, though.
When composing using your phone, you’ll need a viewfinder app to get the focal length and framing right. I use an iPhone, and there’s a wonderful app called “Viewfinder Preview” that works perfectly for this purpose. It’s $4.99, but it’s well worth the price. For Android, there are several options as well, but I can’t comment on them, as I haven’t tried them.
One quirk with this camera is that the ground glass can only be used when film isn’t loaded into the camera — that is, just before you take the very first shot*. Not being able to use the ground glass after the first frame is not ideal, as you’ll have to approximate focus on the following three frames. I have gotten good results by using a laser distance meter to measure the distance from the lens to the subject. I find that the distance markings on the helicoid lack granularity, so nailing critical focus is difficult when a distance reading is all you’ve got to work with. However, most of the time for landscapes, you'll be focusing on infinity anyway.
*I discovered that there actually is a way to compose with the ground glass on all four frames, but it’s not convenient. Earlier, I mentioned that there is no locking mechanism when winding, so the film can be wound freely in either direction. So, there’s nothing stopping you from winding the film back onto the original spool. Doing this after each shot lets you keep using the ground glass. It’s an unglamorous and slow process, especially when you reach the last frame, but it is possible. This is what I've started doing when photographing near subjects.
Film is loaded from right to left so that the frame numbers line up in chronological order. This means the film borders are displayed backwards and upside down relative to the image. It doesn’t make a practical difference.
You might want to consider getting a center ND filter, because the 90mm lens produces some pretty heavy vignetting, especially when shooting at low apertures. Vignettes can definitely add some character to a photo, but it doesn’t suit every scene. An appropriate center ND filter more or less gets rid of the vignette. They haven’t been in production for decades, so they’re becoming harder and harder to find, but they pop up on eBay every once in a while. Be prepared to pay up, though, because they are not cheap. The exact filter I have is the “Schneider-Kreuznach 67mm Center-Filter IIIa,” which matches the Schneider Super-Angulon 90mm f/8 lens. It adds about two stops to the exposure, so that is something to consider.
Wish list
Having shot with this camera for about two years, as of writing this, there are certain things I wish it had.
First is support for different lenses. Being stuck with 90mm can feel quite limiting at times when you can’t get close enough to a subject. 90mm is by no means the worst focal length to be stuck with, but it would be so much nicer if the lens cone could be swapped out like you can on the Chroma Six:17, for example.
Second, I really wish Noble Design had included strap lugs for attaching a strap. With its current design, if you want to take it with you on a hike, you must rely on a camera bag or a backpack to carry it around.
Third — and this is a nitpick — I wish film was loaded from left to right, so the film borders face the right way when viewing the negatives.
I was originally going to wish for a switchable film back design, but in the end, I think that would somewhat defeat the purpose of what this camera was intended for. There are other options, if a switchable film back is important to you.
The verdict
The ND 6x17 is a thoughtfully designed camera. Despite its plastic construction, it feels solidly built. The accessories, while costly, are well-made and serve a purpose. The price of the ND 6x17 setup seems reasonable when compared to “professional” 6x17 cameras, such as the prohibitively expensive Fuji GX617 or Shen Hao 617 ($2,000+). The weight and footprint of the camera is a big plus, as it’s small enough to fit in virtually any backpack and can be brought on planes without too much trouble. It is not a perfect package, however, for reasons listed above.
Scanning
For 6x17, I really encourage you to get a dedicated film scanner. I use an Epson Perfection V800, and it does a fantastic job. With one of these scanners, the process of scanning 6x17 is no different from scanning 6x6 or 6x7. I’ve been happy with the color conversions in SilverFast 9, but you can also scan your negatives as positives and then convert them in an external tool. I often see people recommend Negative Lab Pro for Lightroom, but you can also use tools like Photoshop or Affinity.
When I first got this camera, I only had access to a DSLR scanning setup. That works great for 35mm and common medium format sizes, but because of the size of 6x17 negatives, you will need to take multiple images of each negative and then stitch them together in photo editing software. Some apps offer auto-stitching, but in my experience, that rarely gives great results. That leaves you with the option of stitching them manually, which is tedious work, and the result still won’t be perfect because of the unavoidable perspective warping and lens distortion in each image.
What finally sold me on getting a dedicated film scanner was dust removal. Removing dust from such a large image is an extremely repetitive and annoying task. You can literally spend hours panning around your photo at 100% scale with a healing brush, clicking every single speck of dust and painting over tiny strands of hair. There’s no way to avoid it either. It doesn’t matter how clean your negative is, how much you use an air blower before scanning, dust will always be present. So please, for your own sanity, get a dedicated scanner with Digital ICE.
The only benefit I can think of for DSLR scanning 6x17 is the slight increase in sharpness compared to a film scanner like the Epson. But in my experience, Epson scans look fine. If sharpness is the ultimate goal here, you might as well get your image drum scanned.
Comparing it to the XPan
Chances are, if you’re interested in 6x17, you’ve probably also looked into the Hasselblad XPan (or Fujifilm TX-1). The XPan shoots 35mm film and is one of the few cameras to do so without cropping into the frame, as is the case with many point-and-shoots. It shoots respectable 65x24mm-sized frames — not quite wide enough to cover the 3:1 ratio, meaning 6x17 is a bit wider. Both 6x17 cameras and XPan shoot wide panoramic frames on film, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.
On 6x17, you really can’t rush things. You only get four shots per roll, so you try to make them count. A tripod is almost always a necessity, unless you shoot high ISO film and have steady hands. Shooting with the XPan can be more freeing, as you can shoot daytime scenes handheld, and its rangefinder system makes focusing hassle-free. You get 20-21 shots per roll of 36 exposures (13-14 on 24-exposure), so you can be more liberal with the shots you take and experiment with candid shots you wouldn’t normally take on 6x17.
If I had to assign a shooting style to each of the two formats, I would say the XPan is excellent for run-and-gun type photography that you do on the streets or on vacations, while 6x17 is better suited for slowed-down landscape situations. Not that you can’t do landscape photography on the XPan or street on 6x17, but you know what I mean.
XPan shots look beautiful on screens or modestly sized prints, while 6x17 gives you the option to print large, wall-covering artwork.
Should you go wider?
If you think 6x17 is niche, well... some companies have designed cameras that shoot an even wider format: 6x24. That’s a 4:1 aspect ratio and gives you roughly 40% more image compared to 6x17.
I must admit, I haven’t shot this format, so I’ll just give you my thoughts. A well-executed 6x24 shot looks incredible, but I can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of scenes that work well in this format. It just seems too wide. Leveling the camera also seems like it would be a nightmare. The camera not being completely leveled will cause the entire horizon to be angled — a problem that’s already present on 6x17, but amplified further on 6x24.
At 3 shots per roll, it’s even more costly to operate, coming in at 25% more expensive to shoot compared to 6x17. But I suppose if you’re bold enough to shoot this format, money isn’t really a deterrent 😬.
Scanning the negatives also seems like a headache. With Epson film scanners, the included medium format trays only support up to 6x17 negatives. You would have to either place the negative directly on the glass, DSLR scan, or get it drum scanned (not cheap). Perhaps there’s another scanner out there that can do it that I’m not aware of.
Anyways, I'm rambling. In my opinion, 6x17 is the widest reasonable format you can shoot. It’s in that sweet spot of being wide enough to be a true panoramic format, but not ridiculously wide. Much respect to the unreasonable people who shoot 6x24, but it’s not for me.
Sample images
You can see more of my 6x17 photos on my photography page and on my Instagram @filmtoilet.