Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I am looking for the names of shoe mount rangefinders like the watameter.

This is to aid in setting the hyperfocal distance on focus by wire lens or any other lens where there is no distance scale on the lens. One would use this to position youself at the hyperfocal distance from some object and focus the lens. It beats having do it with a measuring tape.

It's called a "range finder"...there's no other name for it. Unfortunately most people hear "rangefinder" and think of the camera.

If you haven't seen it already, I posted something about the Watameter here:
http://tpmg.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16391

Unfortunately if you Google "range finder" you'll get the ones for golfers and hunters.

If you go to the PHSC.CA camera show coming up in a few weeks, you may find some there.

I am well aware that it is called rangefinder and nothing else. I am also aware that when you google you comeup with everything but what you want, guess I should of been clearer. I am looking for some other brand names so that I can Google for __________ rangefinder (just fill in the blank). Thought maybe some people might be able to pull off the top of there head some other brands that were made, I am sure Watameter was not the only one.

Not that I know anything about these things but how about Voigtl

I've seen referances to Voigtl

Mike, thanks for the clarification. I'm sure some people not familiar with the contraption (like me) would be even more confused without your helpful clarification.

If you're being sarcastic, if TS had asked for "brandnames" of various devices then there wouldn't have been the confusion.

Most people confuse "range finder" with the style of camera, as not many photographers have used the gadget that goes into the accessory shoe...I thought the TS was looking for another name of the device, because all of his searches was just coming up with the camera, OK?

Other than that, some other brandnames that made these were Leica/Leitz, Kodak, Ideal, Dejur-Amsco, Nippon, Nikon, Zeiss, etc.

There's a bunch you can see at:
http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkoresources/RF-Nikkor/RF-Accessories/Nikon-RF-Finders/index1.htm

A user named walkaboutcamera posts about shoemount rangefinders and no one thinks about those creepy guys scoping upskirt photos with cams in their sneakers?

Kodak produced among the highest quality optical rangefinders and viewfinders that incorporated designs far superior to those employed by other manufacturers including those of Lietz and Zeiss Ikon.

Two Kodak rangefinders are shown here, one produced through the 1930's and into the early 1940's (above left), the other produced from the early 1940's through about 1960 (above right). Both incorporated not only an excellent split image design, but they provided a third optical image of a distance scale in the same field of view (see above). This unusually sophisticated patented optical design by Mihalyi was based upon an earlier design by John E. Woodbury who patented several coupled range finders between 1914 and 1941.

The Mihaly design adapted Woodbury's three image segments to effectively provide not only a split image of the field, but also the distance scale in the third viewing field segment (see Early Kodak coupled rangefinders). This sophisticated split image design was widely considered to be superior to that of the coincident image design of Leitz which required alignment of two superimposed images. Anyone who has experience using a Leica camera is well aware of how helpful it is to provide some contrast to the second coincident image. Leitz even offered an accessory colored filter to place over one of the rangefinder windows in order to provide such contrast and make focusing easier. Today, most rangefinder focusing designs utilize the split image pioneered by Kodak.

http://sites.google.com/site/ldtomei/ac ... iewfinders

it took a few second but... HAHHAHA...

I was not being sarcastic.

Whats "TS"?

Thread Starter...sometimes written as OP or Opening Post/Poster.

I think OP stands for Original Poster I never heard of TS used in that context but then again I can't keep up with the shortening of the English language.

Handy reference for new speak http://www.internetslang.com/OP.asp