| Description | The architect and animated film maker John Martin Funnell (1930-2019) served in the British army as a National Serviceman in Hong Kong, 1953-1955. Corporal Funnell, as he then was, made a panoramic camera out of stiff cardboard, glued with Seccotine (refined fish glue), balsa cement, brown sticky paper, a motor from an alarm clock, and a recycled medium format camera lens. The camera was mounted on a tripod and took seven seconds to traverse a 90-degree angle. The camera used 120 film, taking four shots in a standard roll of 12 exposures. Funnell usually used Ilford FP4 (black and white) film, but occasionally used Agfacolor (colour transparency/slide) film.
A small selection of scans made by Martin Funnell from his negatives are online on the Historical Photographs of China web site (ref: MF-d). Some of his animated films are held by the British Film Institute (BFI).
DM3108/1: A box of panoramic black and white negatives, panoramic colour transparencies, 35mm negatives and 35mm slides. The panoramic negatives are in five cardboard sleeves labelled ‘Hong Kong’, ‘Far East’, ‘Not Hong Kong’, ‘Europe’, ‘Misc’. Two envelopes of panoramic negatives are labelled ‘Scanned’ and ‘Not scanned’. One tin is labelled ‘China Seas and scraps of HK’. Five digital videocassettes are labelled ‘China Camera 1-5’.
DM3108/2: Seven plastic storage boxes of 35mm transparencies (slides). Six are labelled ‘China’; one ‘Far East’.
DM3108/3: A metal, home-made, panoramic camera. This camera was made by Martin Funnell in the 1950s to replace his Hong Kong stiff cardboard panoramic camera which did not survive the journey back to the UK.
DM3108/4: An annotated relief map of Hong Kong and the New Territories, published by China Geographic Model Manufactory, Hong Kong, dated 1954.
DM3108/5: Book. ‘Standing Easy in Hong Kong’ by Martin Funnell (1999).
DM3108/6: Book. ‘Sketchbook China’ by Martin Funnell (2003).
DM3108/7: Digital black and white prints made from panoramic negatives. 69cm x 22cm. These were made to be mounted in curved Perspex and viewed in a panoramic photograph booth built by Martin Funnell for use in fêtes etc.
DM3108/8: A book of twenty post cards, entitled ‘20 Views of Old Shanghai’, published by Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, c.2002. The views are reproductions of photographs taken in the city, 1900s – 1930s. |