The Tutone is a wooden, fixed focal length camera for either a 90mm leaf shutter lens or a pinhole.
It will take a regular 4x5 Double Dark Slide (DDS) sheet film holder, a 545 Polaroid sheet holder, some 405 Polaroid pack holders, a 4x5 Grafmatic x6 sheet film magazine, a 120 roll film holder on a 4x5 adapter plate, or even a digital back with the appropriate 4x5 adaptor.
The Tutone is a modern point-and-shoot camera with a traditional style. It is beautiful, sturdy, and very light, (400g basic, typically 950g with your own lens, bracket and DDS) and can be used handheld or on a tripod. There are two sockets for mounting an L-shaped angle bracket or tripod in either landscape or portrait mode.
It has Graflok type sliders to hold a variety of film holders, a pair of swivel clips to grip a DDS, a cold shoe for fixing a viewfinder or flash, two bubble spirit levels and a brass frame-finder to aid composition.
Depth of field (focus) is dictated by the aperture. The point of sharpest focus is set at approximately 4 metres by the position of the lensboard. At f.22, everything between 2 metres and infinity is in focus.
Used handheld with a 90mm lens, it may be best to use a fast film so that the shutter speed can be at least /125. In variable weather conditions it is quite feasible to shoot one sheet of film at the box speed of say, ISO 200, and then to push the next shot to ISO 400 and develop accordingly.
Used on a tripod, of course, you can shoot at whatever speeds your lens and film offer. When shooting pinhole you will need to calculate the exposure according to your film and the conditions.
The original Neretta was designed in 2003 to use with a pinhole, but I chose the 90mm focal length so that it could also take a wide angle large format lens. The Tutone is so named because of the contrasting colours of the Cherry and Maple wood used for the construction. The back is North American Cherry while the front cone is North American Maple. The wood is finished with Danish Oil and Liberon wax polish. The inside is painted matt black.
Each numbered camera has been made individually by hand in my studio. As with any hand made item there will be slight cosmetic differences between each camera. The camera itself contains no plastic parts, being made of wood, brass plate, brass screws and glue. Only the aluminium tripod insert threads, the bubble levels, cold shoe and felt strips are factory made imports.
The camera has three Maple lensboards, one with a size '0' hole, one blank, and one with a pinhole.
