Adapting monocular reflex viewer for Arca Swiss?

[Mike Kuszek]

I think I am going to solve my own problem by adapting a monocular reflex cambo viewer to my Arca Swiss F 4x5 Classic.I think the cambo monocular viewer may be the best candidate for adapting.The Arca has the binocular reflex viewer that is expensive/hard to find used/to large to pack compactly.So I figure I will buy a Cambo monocular reflex because there are lots around used/cheap/real small and easy to pack.Has anyone made an attemt to adapt someting like this to the Arca? My advantage is my son works in a machine shop and I have metal/welding backgro und so anything's possible.

[Ellis Vener]

I think you might be better off by finding one of the used Sinar direct viewing attachment (the bino magnifying board) that uses their bag bellows and adapting a frame that will work with the Arca attachment frame. i think I have one of those frames somewhere in my used oddities kit and Camera Co-Op in Houston has the Sinar bits.

[Jim Bancroft]

Hi Mike-

I've used the Cambo momocular reflex viewer which was included with my Cambowide. The problem I found was that the mirror Cambo uses is not very bright. On the other hand the Toyo, Horseman and Sinar binocular reflex viewers use very bright mirrors yielding an image which is much easier to focus. I'm currently using a Toyo bino viewer on my Arca F-line using velcro to mount it. It works quite well.

jim

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

This is probably irrelevant for 4"x5" use : I'm using a rigid Hasselblad Rmfx mo nocular viewer on my Arca 6x9cm This is very compact and works fine but since the device is rigid it does not compensate for a possible tilting angle like the binocular Arca system or th e simple Silvestri tilting loupe. However the Rmfx is well shielded against stray light but covers a 6x6 field onl y with a probable 2,5X magnification. The built-in loupe is actually very crude unfortunately, so with a good loupe and a 45 degrees (act ually not quite) first surface mirror you could imagine something in the same spirit as the Rmfx, very compact, but wi th a much better optical quality.

On the binocular Arca viewer you have a sophisticated theta- 2 theta mechanism t o keep the optical axis in the right direction when you tilt. More tricky to fabricate yourself.