We briefly covered the VZ-6617 in our roundup of Kickstarter film cameras earlier this year. At the time, details were thin and the campaign hadn't launched yet. Now, with the Kickstarter going live on April 14, 2026, we know a lot more — and this camera deserves its own deep dive. Created by Francis Garing through his project Exposing Engineering, the VZ-6617 is a variable-frame medium format camera that does something no production camera has ever done: it lets you change aspect ratios between exposures on the same roll of 120 film.
Switch from 6x6 square to 6x17 panoramic mid-roll, on a single camera, without wasting a frame. The VZ-6617 is the kind of invention only independent makers would attempt.
The Articulating Mask: How It Works
The heart of the VZ-6617 is its fully 3D-printed articulating mask mechanism. This physical gate sits directly in front of the film plane and adjusts continuously — not in fixed steps, but across a smooth range from 6x6 all the way to 6x17. Turn a control on the body and the film gate widens or narrows, changing the exposed area of the frame in real time.
This is fundamentally different from cameras with interchangeable film backs. There's no swapping parts, no removing the back to change inserts, no commitment to a single format for the entire roll. You compose a square 6x6 portrait, advance the film, widen the gate to 6x12 for a landscape, advance again, push it out to 6x17 for a full panoramic — all without interrupting your shoot. Every frame on the roll can be a different aspect ratio if you choose.
The continuous adjustment also means you're not limited to named formats. Somewhere between 6x6 and 6x17 there are ratios like 6x7, 6x9, 6x12, and everything in between. The VZ-6617 treats format as a creative variable, not a fixed parameter. That's a conceptual shift that has real practical implications for how you think about composition on medium format.
Design and Build
3D printing is central to the VZ-6617's design — not as a compromise, but as an enabler. The articulating mask mechanism would be extremely difficult to manufacture using traditional machining at a price point accessible to independent photographers. 3D printing makes the geometry possible while keeping costs within reach of a crowdfunding campaign.
Beyond the mask, the camera is packed with thoughtful details that reveal how much field testing has gone into the design. Quick-release film spool holders speed up loading and unloading — a small thing that matters enormously when you're working in the field and want to change rolls fast. A backing frame counter supports multiple aspect ratios, so you always know how many exposures remain regardless of what format mix you've shot. Body-mounted bubble levels help nail horizons, especially critical for panoramic formats where a slight tilt becomes glaringly obvious across a 6x17 frame.
Three cold shoe mounts give you flexibility for accessories — an external viewfinder, a light meter, a spirit level, whatever your workflow demands. And magnetically detachable cable releases mean you can trigger the shutter with minimal vibration, essential for the longer exposures that medium format and small apertures often require.
Viewfinder Options
The VZ-6617 offers two viewfinding approaches: a traditional optical viewfinder and a phone-based viewfinder app. The optical finder gives you a direct, no-battery-needed framing reference. The app turns your phone into a live viewfinder with frame lines that update to match your chosen aspect ratio — genuinely useful when you're switching formats frequently and need to see exactly what each composition will look like at 6x9 versus 6x17.
Neither approach is a rangefinder or SLR — the VZ-6617 is essentially a view camera body, which means focusing happens on the lens itself. This brings us to one of the camera's most interesting design decisions.
Large Format Lenses on a Medium Format Body
The VZ-6617 is compatible with most large format view camera lenses that have integrated shutters. This is a deliberate choice: large format lenses project image circles far larger than what even a 6x17 frame requires, which means edge-to-edge sharpness and even illumination across every aspect ratio the camera supports.
Field-tested lenses include the Fujifilm Fujinon-SW 90mm f/8, the Schneider Kreuznach Super Angulon 90mm f/8, and the Schneider Kreuznach Super Angulon 75mm f/8. These are proven optics with reputations built over decades of large format use. The 90mm focal length on a 6x17 frame gives a perspective roughly equivalent to a moderate wide-angle on 35mm — wide enough to breathe, not so wide that straight lines bend into curves. The 75mm pushes wider, getting closer to an ultra-wide perspective that suits expansive landscapes and architectural work.
Sourcing these lenses is straightforward. Large format glass with integrated Copal or Compur shutters is widely available on the used market, often at reasonable prices compared to medium format system lenses. A clean Fujinon-SW 90mm f/8 can typically be found for $300 to $500. That's a genuine advantage: the VZ-6617 taps into an existing ecosystem of high-quality optics rather than requiring proprietary glass.
Who Is This Camera For?
Landscape photographers are the obvious audience. The ability to frame a sweeping vista in 6x17 and then capture a detail shot in 6x6 without changing cameras or backs is a real workflow improvement. Travel photographers benefit too — one body that covers square portraits, standard rectangles, and full panoramics means fewer items in the bag and more creative flexibility per roll of film.
But the VZ-6617 also appeals to a more experimental crowd. Fine art photographers working on projects that explore format as a conceptual element — mixing aspect ratios within a series, using frame dimensions as part of the visual language — now have a tool that makes those ideas practical rather than theoretical. And for anyone who simply loves the meditative process of medium format photography but chafes at being locked into a single format per roll, the VZ-6617 is liberating.
The Bigger Picture
The VZ-6617 embodies what makes the current analog renaissance so exciting. Major camera manufacturers have shown little interest in developing new film bodies — they're focused on mirrorless digital systems, and the economics make that perfectly rational. But independent designers like Francis Garing are stepping into the gap, using modern manufacturing techniques like 3D printing to solve creative problems that the big companies won't touch.
A variable-frame medium format camera is not a product that Canon or Fujifilm would ever greenlight. The market is too small, the engineering is too niche, and the business case doesn't scale. But for the photographers who want this capability, “too niche” is irrelevant — what matters is that someone built it. Kickstarter campaigns like this one prove that passionate engineering and a dedicated community can produce tools that no corporate R&D department would fund.
The campaign launches April 14, 2026. If the concept resonates with you, it's worth following Exposing Engineering for pricing and pledge details as they drop. The usual crowdfunding caveats apply — delays happen, first-run units may need refinement, and 3D-printed components raise fair questions about long-term durability. Back with realistic expectations, and you might end up with one of the most genuinely original film cameras to emerge in years.
Tracking Multi-Format Rolls
Here's the practical challenge the VZ-6617 creates: when every frame on a roll can be a different aspect ratio, keeping track of what you shot becomes significantly more complex. Frame 1 was 6x6 at f/8, frame 2 was 6x12 at f/11, frame 3 was 6x17 at f/16 — and each format produces a different number of potential exposures per roll. Without notes, matching scans to shooting data becomes a puzzle.
This is exactly the kind of problem Pellica was designed to solve. The film roll tracker lets you log camera, lens, format, and exposure settings per frame as you shoot. When your scans come back from the lab — find one near you with the lab finder — you can match each image to its metadata instantly. The built-in light meter helps you nail exposure on a camera with no metering of its own, which is critical when you're working with large format lenses that don't communicate with the body.
A camera that treats format as a creative variable deserves a tracking tool that can keep up. Log every frame, learn from every roll, and turn the VZ-6617's flexibility into repeatable creative results.
