New Autofocus 4x5"

[fist]

https://www.instagram.com/conflict.cameras/

I designed an autofocus interchangeable lens 4x5" camera.

Currently its in a prototype phase, first functional prototype is ready.

Its designed to be the ideal handheld 4x5", with extremely high accuracy laser based focusing system. Accuracy is in the range of 1-2mm.

So you can shoot wide open if you like. It can handle heavy fast lenses.

You can also calibrate framlines as you like, and for the format you are using. For example, its possible to have perfectly accurate and parallax corrected framelines for 6x12.

You can calibrate easily as many lenses as you like into it.

Lens range is 65-150mm. It has a focus pull of 62mm, so it enables close focus to about 50cm on 150mm. And on wide angle lenses you get to 10-20cm.

At zero position, it has a film to lenstandard distance of 90mm.

The back is designed mainly for Grafmatic/Kinematic multishot holders, but also takes regular double sided holders, polaroid holders & roll film holders.

It has a integrated semispot light meter, its able to calculate bellows extensions etc. automatically.

Also has accelerometer & gyro, so digital horizontal lines are available.

It will also be able to calculate depth of field, so you can adjust that based on a visual indicator in the finder.

It has a WIFI interface, and updatable firmware for additional functionalities.

The finder uses high quality coated glass optics.

I designed this based on my 20 years of LF shooting experience, and its designed to be my ideal camera.

Its as compact as it can, the frame is not much larger than the cassette dicates. Its fast, solid, accurate and capable of focusing close.

It will be available for sale when its fully ready. If you are interested in it, best way to keep up with it is through instagram. I will also release some other projects related to LF photography.

[Neal Chaves]

I have had a lot of experience photographing people in all situations with hand-held press and view cameras and I have also used FujiFilm digital cameras since the early 2000s. Graflex actually advertised the Kalart rangefinder as "automatic focusing" in the 1940s and 50s. With today's digital cameras, auto focusing means much more than rangefinding. We have face detection, eye detection, smile detection, identification and numerous other features, some these I have found very useful and advantageous. There are many reasons I might choose to use a hand-held press camera rather than a digital camera, but I don't feel that automatic rangefinding would be much of a benefit over a cam-coupled, split image rangefinder with rangelight or even be much faster.

[fist]

I have had a lot of experience photographing people in all situations with hand-held press and view cameras and I have also used FujiFilm digital cameras since the early 2000s. Graflex actually advertised the Kalart rangefinder as "automatic focusing" in the 1940s and 50s. With today's digital cameras, auto focusing means much more than rangefinding. We have face detection, eye detection, smile detection, identification and numerous other features, some these I have found very useful and advantageous. There are many reasons I might choose to use a hand-held press camera rather than a digital camera, but I don't feel that automatic rangefinding would be much of a benefit over a cam-coupled, split image rangefinder with rangelight or even be much faster.

By autofocus, it means that you don't have to focus. That it moves the lens for you, based on where you want to focus. This is the definition of autofocus.

This is faster and more accurate, but one of the main benefits is actually that you can calibrate multiple lenses in this. This has always been an issue with speed graphics, where you can only calibrate one lens.

The other big benefit are the framelines, you get accurate projected framelines for all formats & lenses.

So its exactly developed to solve all the problems that are in current solutions. I have owned them all.

This is designed to suit my own need, to solve all the issues i have had with cameras. I have shot mainly handheld 4x5" from the start, and always trying to find the best way to do it. So this is camera designed by a photographer, to solve issues.

Its also designed to be as compact as possible, its actually more compact than most manual focus "point & shoot" 4x5" cameras.

That said, i do also have another system that i'm going to release that might be more suited for you.

[Tin Can]

When?

[fist]

When?

When it's ready, all my predictions have been so off that it's pointless to try to make them anymore. But its now in a good phase.

[Tin Can]

I posted years ago my Laser FocuSpot

Works great but not for people or critters

Trees and bridges survive the cosmic blast

[fist]

I posted years ago my Laser FocuSpot

Works great but not for people or critters

Trees and bridges survive the cosmic blast

Yes, Iw done that also. This is basically a descendent of the Kalarts lightbulb system. As i used a similar laser system on my previous cameras long a go. Had one in a modified Patent Etui 9x12, that i shot a lot of film though. I also used the idea from Olympus XA4, that had a wrist strap that also doubled as a close focus distance measuring device I had that in my Patent Etui 9x12 to focus as close as 30cm.

And this is simply an evolution to my previous work. It was finally possible for me to build this, thanks to 3D printing and the availability of microcontrollers.

[ic-racer]

Looks interesting. I have been using autofocus 6x6cm format for a little over a year now and would not want to go back to manual focus.
I use two AF 6x6cm cameras, Rollei 6008AF and Rollei Hy6.

[Duolab123]

That's pretty cool. Be interested in seeing a teaser youtube video.

[Tin Can]

Good fortune to you!