Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/07/21

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Subject: [Leica] Some technical speculations re: rangefinder
From: richard at richardmanphoto.com (Richard Man)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:05:07 -0700

Speculating on an ideal optical rangefinder system (i.e. something that
retains the Leica M DNA and yet improves on the 1950 state of the art M3),
what if a rangefinder has the following features:

- LED projected framelines. This removes the clutter, solves the visibility
issue, and

- changeable rangefinder magnification - what if the rangefinder has 0.58x
to 1.2x mag builtin (may be in 4 steps: 0.58x, 0.72x, 0.9x and 1.2x or
something similar)? This would allow more precise focusing from the wide to
tele. This will leverage the existing frame line trigger and 6 bit coding
system of course so this would be automatic

- parallax adjustment based on focusing distance

We know LED framelines can be done. The M9 Titanium has it.

The XPan has 2 magnifications: one for the 45mm lens and one for the 90mm
lens. I have no idea how difficult it is to insert multiple mag piece as
needed. Anyone knows?

The cam position should also give good indication of the focusing distance
too, along with the lens info, so #3 is technically feasible too.

Chances are Leica nor anyone else would really spend the resource to
develop something like these, since a CMOS/Liveview is so much "simpler,"
but would it be nice to have such a system?

-- 
// richard <http://www.richardmanphoto.com>


Replies: Reply from hopsternew at gmail.com (Geoff Hopkinson) ([Leica] Some technical speculations re: rangefinder)
Reply from kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner) ([Leica] Some technical speculations re: rangefinder)
Reply from pdzwig at summaventures.com (Peter Dzwig) ([Leica] Some technical speculations re: rangefinder)
Reply from richard at richardmanphoto.com (Richard Man) ([Leica] Some technical speculations re: rangefinder)