I am very keen in participating in an effort to make a good open-source design for a 6x17cm camera. I am a user of a Linhof 617S, which may be of assistance.
I am in South Africa though, but let's not let that hinder us
My 'ethos' in using the Technorama very much is in line with Linhof's marketing material: "Hand-Held Large Format". About half of my shots are hand-held, unusual for this large format I know, but it works excellently, the camera is heavy with no vibration, tack sharp images down to 1/15th of a second.
In this regard, do you think it would be too complex / asking too much to incorporate a rangefinder? This is my only issue with the camera, guess focus is not *always* efficient, especially in fast situations (yes, one can use this camera in 'fast' situations, otherwise best use a view camera which is more flexible). I am talking about a coupled rangefinder, not an accessory one. Would certainly be an interesting engineering challenge
But if enough people put their minds to it, why not?
The second issue is making a finder with zero distortion. I am sure one can compute an optical design which sacrifices, say, resolution for distortion correction. The Linhof Finder, which is (arguably?) the best one out there, still has massive barrel distortion, affecting one's ability to correct for camera tilt when the reference lines in the scene are close to the edges of the view.
For me, It's down to either getting a Mamiya 7, or building a rangefinder-focusing 6x17cm
One does not need the complexities of easily changed lenses (a la Leica M / Mamiya 7) a much simpler design would suffice. Also does not have to be as accurate as those, since shallow-DOF 6x17cm does not make much sense IMHO.
