Panoramic man: Ron Klein will be in action Friday. MICHAEL PENN/THE JUNEAU EMPIRE

Fifteen minutes of the Alaska Folk Festival's Friday nights are always the same. The lights go on, every fiddler in the house is invited on the Centennial Hall stage for the Alaska Fiddlers Convention and Juneau photographer Ron Klein walks out with his 84-year-old, 45-pound Folmer and Schwing No. 10 Cirkut panoramic camera.

Once he sets up and the shutter opens, it takes 80 seconds for his camera to imprint a panoramic shot of the audience on to 40 inches of panoramic 400-speed film. Twenty-four hours later, Klein sells 50 prints of the annual folk-festival "family portrait" on a table in the lobby.

"In theory, it shouldn't work out at all," Klein said. "The camera has been highly modified to take a 360-degree picture inside of a room where there's low-level light. I had to use a special lens (a 109-year-old wide-angle Dakor symmetrical lens) that is actually mounted backwards inside the camera so that it would work."

Klein, a photographer in Juneau since 1975, has taken the picture at every folk festival but one since 1985. He missed one when he was in Korea.

He bought his Cirkut, fewer than 2,000 of which were made between 1904 and 1932, from an elderly man in Los Angeles in 1981. He now has four antique backups that he collects for parts. The film - $50 for a 10-inch wide roll - is the hard part. Kodak has discontinued its 400-speed panoramic stock. He has 85 feet of film remaining.

"I just use what I can get from people that are retiring from the business," Klein said "I have to be very careful. I have a roll of film that I saved from last year, that I earmarked for (the festival). The only danger would be the film getting so old that it can't be processed."

Klein used to dash home Friday nights and return a few hours later with a proof. Now he takes a little more time. He develops his negatives by hand in a series of seven rubber washing tubs filled with water and chemical baths. For color film, the solutions must be within one quarter of one degree. After the negative is stabilized and dried, he adds titling. He inserts the negative into a contact printing machine he's made and feeds rolls of photographic paper through to make the prints. He doesn't use an enlarger.

"People ask if I can make a print from one of the old negatives, and it's not possible to do it," Klein said. "It takes three hours to set the contact printer up with the negative on there to make one print. I'm not interested in doing it unless I get substantial orders."