Halina's focus-free 35mm panorama compact — fixed exposure, 13x36mm masked frame, no battery needed
The Halina Panorama is a focus-free plastic 35mm camera made by W. Haking Enterprises of Hong Kong, sold in the UK under the Halina name and widely rebadged elsewhere: the same camera appeared as the Ansco Pix Panorama in the US, the Revue Panorama for Foto-Quelle in Germany, the Hanimex Panorama 35, the Arico Panorama CL-168 and the Suntone MM350.
Everything is fixed: focus (roughly 1m to infinity), aperture and shutter speed, with no meter, no flash and no battery. The lens is a simple wide-angle plastic optic estimated around 28-30mm. The panorama effect comes from an internal mask that crops the frame to about 13x36mm, producing a letterboxed image on standard 35mm film rather than a genuinely wider view. Wind-on and rewind are manual.
It earned a cult following as one of the cheapest routes into panoramic-format film photography, and the wide lens plus cropped frame genuinely suits landscapes, beach scenes and street panoramas in bright light. Softness, vignetting and flare are part of the deal. Labs will print the letterbox frames, though some need warning that the negatives are masked.
With no electronics, used buying is simple: check the shutter fires, the wind sprockets turn and the back closes cleanly, and look for cracks around the door hinge. Check the internal mask is present and seated, since it defines the format. Because the identical camera exists under several names, compare listings across brands - the rebadges are often cheaper than the Halina-branded version.