The Arca Swiss reflex I am overhauling now is as close to this as I have seen. It has a plastic/composite frame with aluminum/steel panels bolted on, some die-cast parts, and lightweight fabric shutter curtains.

No need for exposure/readout, that's easy to do without. Prism finder would be ideal but add a lot of weight to get full coverage. the L-R reversal is annoying but at least it's rightside up, indeed.

Price-wise it would have to be something like $5k given the low quantity/high complexity. Even a nicely overhauled working Graflex RB SuperD with a Graflok back conversion will easily bring $1500-2k.

The Arca has a really compact set of rollerblind shutter curtains and a nice, all-mechanical shutter geartrain system that does up to 1/500th and down to something like 1/2 second. I'll post pics sometime when I make a rebuild thread for it in the DIY area.

And yes, a 2-piece or folding mirror of some type would be necessary to get shorter than about 150mm lenses. I was thinking some sort of 2-piece mirror with a hinge in the middle that folds backwards somehow could make it work (short lenses clearing the mirror)

-Ed


Quote Originally Posted by jp View Post
kevlar shutter fabric, graflock back and body made of composites (body could be super strong with a few invisible ribs built in). Graflex SLRs had the image right side up, it was just horizontally flipped like with a TLR. Polarfleece fuzz around the eyepiece in your choice of bright colors. LCD readout showing the actual measured exposure. Doubt you'd get shorter than 150mm lens on it.

I'd pay $1k, probably cost $5k like the last rollei's and people would wonder why nobody was buying when old ones are still working. The gowland aerial was a pretty light camera that would be acceptable at twice the weight if you had to add focus track, shutter, mirror, etc..