New Arca Swiss Rangefinder?

[Doug Dolde]

Anyone know more about this one?

http://www.photomark.com/arca_swiss_rangefinder.php

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Hello from France
I have manipulated the first prototype in October 2006 and as of autumn 2007, the first cameras of this kind have been delivered to customers.
I'll have soon some feedback about this camera since I know a French professional photographer who just received one, the 6x9 model Rm3d.

There has been a discussion (in French) here, Nov. 2007,
http://www.galerie-photo.info/forum/...=53023&t=53023
with a feed back from another photographer, Brice Desrez who works with the Rm3d.

The professional photographer I know personnaly, Stéphane Spach from Strasbourg, France, is an architecture photographer and he works with a digital back.
He gives a very positive fedback here
http://www.galerie-photo.info/forum/...=57925&t=57925

We'll try to push both users to write a report on the Rm3d for galerie-photo.com, if.. and when done, some of the volunteers of the French forum galerie-photo.info will make a translation into English.

A companion article, again in French, by Cédric Mialaret
http://www.galerie-photo.com/test-ob...r-digital.html
about his tests on the Rodenstock digital lenses, 35 and 45mm. Cédric is fluent in English and will certainly answer any enquiry about his test.

[evan clarke]

Here is a link to a small brochure..EC

http://www.precisioncameraworks.com/...tokina2006.pdf

[Ken Lee]

If you would like a crude translation of these web pages, you can visit Google Translate. The service is free.

At the bottom of the page, you can enter in the URLs which Emmanuel has given, choose the languages, and it's quite fast. The site supports translation to/from many languages.

[Rob_5419]

It's an exceptionally ugly camera.

However it will be interesting to see whether the AS shows any design improvements over the Silvestri Flexicam.

[David A. Goldfarb]

So is it in fact a rangefinder? It doesn't look like it has a standard rangefinder, but skimming the discussion on the French forum it looked like the lenses are calibrated for the body, so I suppose there could be an electronic rangefinder in there, or does that just refer to setting the infinity point? If it actually had a rangefinder, that would really set it apart from cameras like the Cambo Wide DS, Silvestri, Fotoman, etc.

[Frank Petronio]

It has that certain Graflex XL aesthetic appeal... that is really effing fugly. At least a $20,000 Alpa looks cool for the money.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

To David Goldfarb : the rangefinder system is probably still in development.

The principle is as follows.
The helical mount has a fine pitch, is part of the camera body (unlike the Alpa and many others) and is common to all lenses. the fine pitch is of course aimed at properly focussing short focal lenghts of the last generation of digital lenses.

Each lens is calibrated for infinity-focus according to its exact focal length.
From this position a built-in sensor monitors the travel of the helical with respect to the infinity-focus position. How this system interferes with the tilting movement, I do not know ; probably you have to set your distance at zero tilt then apply the required amount of tilt which is very small when focal lenghts are short. One degree... or even less.
The information is compared (probably through something like Newton's formulae ) to what an external rangefinder system says for the subject you are pointing at (do not know which kind of rangefinder system, Linhof had introduced for some time an electronic rangefinder for the Technika)

For the moment the photographer I know, S. Spach, did not wait for the rangefinder system to be completed, he uses a small manual laser rangefinder (found in a hardware store probably) and he transfers the distance reading to the helical manually. He does architecture photography and he is happy when he has done half a dozen of good images per day, so slowness is not an issue.
The helical he uses already has the built-in displacement sensor operational, so he his ready to couple it with the future rangefinder system.

So, the helical has a very fine pitch. This is good for short focal lengths but slooooow for long focal lenghts.
If you want to use long focal lengths beyond what can be reasonably mounted with the helical, you can use the Rm3D as the front standard of an A/S monorail with a bellows, the Rm3d attachements are the standard 110mm F-line attachement system, you can focus at the rear standard with the classic rack and pinion system (2 cm of travel for one 360° knob turn) and if you wish you can also use the front helical for fine tuning but then you loose the infinity-focus setting.

You can also re-use a calibrated lens on any A/S monorail camera with an adapting board, bayonet-to-110 or bayonet-to-141. No more helical of course.
Again the calibration that has been done when mounting the lens on the bayonet is no longer useful except if you can properly set the distance between your function carriers to match the infinity-focus position. This is not so weird, you could imagine a kind of a simple gauge that defines a reference distance between the carriers for each calibrated lens and automatically defines the infinity setting. One gauge per lens... Ahem..

[Doug Dolde]

http://www.viewcameras.blogspot.com/

Sent by Rod Klukas

[Songyun]

I am more interested in the P1 ball head, I can not find the technical date of this ball head anywhere, even the weight of the ball head.