Hi All,

My interest is not so much photography as electronics. I am here both for a bit of advice and to shamelessly plug my product.

I developed a focal plane meter for my father's 4x5 Sinar several years ago, as my hobby was electronics and I am an engineer by trade. I have since supplied a couple more to other large format photographers, and then decided to productionise the design and to consider marketing it.

My question is whether people are interested in such a product at the price I can sensibly achieve (£120, roughly US$160 or Euro 130), and whether people have any suggestions or comments on the design.

It comprises a frame, which inserts into the camera in place of the usual film carrier, with a metering probe that can be seen through the ground glass and used to measure the brightness at any particular points of interest in the image. The general idea is that you can examine the brightness in highlights and shadows and adjust to an exposure such that any shadow or highlight detail of interest will be retained in the final print. My father, I think, was using Adams' zone system at the time I developed this and this type of meter is ideal for that purpose.

I believe that meters of this type have previously been produced e.g. by Sinar, very sophisticated but also very expensive. This was intended as a low cost, basic (but still accurate and reliable) alternative.

What do people think? Obviously a get rich quick system this isn't - the total world market would hardly keep someone in film for a year - but I thought it might be a useful product that people might be interested in.

See more details at http://www.dlgelectronics.com

Picture below - there is more at the link above. Please feel free to message me either here or via the link above.

I would also be interested if anyone has any other ideas for useful photographic/optical electronics products.
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Thanks!

Dave