Wanderlust 4x5 P&S

[alexn]

3 cold shoes is great! view finder, horizontal bubble, vertical bubble.

Nice!

Shame about your test shots... I am holding my breath to see them and turning a lovely shade of blue! hahah

keep up the good work Ben.

Alex.

[John NYC]

Guys, sheesh.

Rick "a little embarrassed" Denney

The only embarrassing thing was Kuzano ripping into Ben and then calling other people morons. So in opinion it was "guy" not "guys".

People who don't understand today's way of doing small niche projects should check this out.

The 7 Essentials of Crowd-Funding Your Next Photography Project (and How We Funded Ours) « Light Stalking
http://www.lightstalking.com/crowd-fund-photography

[Ben Syverson]

3 cold shoes is great! view finder, horizontal bubble, vertical bubble.

Nice!

Shame about your test shots... I am holding my breath to see them and turning a lovely shade of blue! hahah

keep up the good work Ben.

Alex.

Ha, thanks Alex! I'll have some test shots soon. It's frustrating, because the focus looks great, but the frames are all very evenly washed out.

For the bubble level, have you tried this two-axis hot shoe level? I have some of these and like them a lot. That would free up a cold shoe for you.

I plan to reserve the cold shoes for a viewfinder and a Blik rangefinder. Those Bliks give more accurate readings than a Mamiya 7, and they're slightly cheaper!

[JimL]

Primer and a few coats of flat black paint inside should make it light-tight...

[Ben Syverson]

Yeah, I think I'm going to paint the outside and apply a few layers of gaff tape.

At this point, the prototype has served its official purpose of verifying the design, but it's so cool that I really want to take it around and shoot with it!

[jb7]

Looks good Ben-

I've been working on designs for some P&S's, on and off, for a long time now (don't worry- not for mass production...)-
I really must get some done.

Since you're published yours, my three coldshoes might seem like plagiarism-
however, it's more like convergent evolution-
If you're using an external viewfinder, the best position for it is centrally over the lens,
leaving you with a choice of two for other accessories.

In a further case of plagiarism, I also purchased a Blik Rangefinder, nearly a year ago...
It is good, and accurate, though the image is quite small until you get used to it-

However, the shoe offset means that it doesn't sit particularly easily on my camera-
it won't fit on a cold shoe without sticking well out to one side-
unless you could live with offsetting the viewfinder to the other side shoe.

Not a big deal, but they were designed for cameras that had an integral viewfinder...

Also, in relation to marketing your own camera, the branding on the Blik is quite overpowering...

[Ramiro Elena]

Don't mean to go off topic but if anyone here hasn't seen Joseph's P&S and the Arca Irish, they should. They're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in camera design.

[alexn]

Wondering if you're keen to show any of the test images (despite the fogging) the material not being light tight is not really a concern, I'm more interested to see the sharpness...

Alex.

[Ben Syverson]

Joseph's handcrafted cameras are indeed gorgeous! Incredible work.

I have a few sheets that are hopefully not fogged, but haven't had a chance to drop them at the lab—maybe I can do that tomorrow. In the meantime, I converted a couple of the fogged shots to B&W and boosted the contrast. They're not pretty, but they should give you an idea of the detail. These are both at ƒ/6.8.

The second prototype and production camera should hit infinity focus even slightly better than these test shots show, since we adjusted the FFD.



Detail:





Detail:

[alexn]

All things considered they are fantastic...

Dying to get one of these!!!! I hope they sell enough to warrant a 65mm model too... I might make a wooden one for 47 or 58mm though... something really retro looking.

I am surprised at the depth of field in these shots... Everything appears in focus even at F/6.8.. Stopped down to F/22~F/32 on a tripod with a finer grain film the results should be utterly amazing... Mechanical vignetting also appears less than I would have expected given the angulon at F/6.8... again, with a 90/8 super angulon @ F/22 it should be just perfect... Who would have thought a year ( or even two months ago) that you could shoot wide angle large format with perfect looking results for what, $400 total cost... I paid $235 for the 90/8 I will be using on this camera, $25 for my Quickload holder, and approx ~$100-$125 (including postage) for the camera body... Amazing.

My Linhof Kardan on the other hand cost $525 with no lens, and no film holders, weighs around 3 ton and results will be fairly similar I would imagine. (considering I only shoot wide angle.)

I will leave my 75/4.5 on my 617 and put the 90 on this with a 6x12 back and off I go into the bush!