Anders.

As far as I can see the right-angle prism version should work. My final arrangement is the rear prism (faces gg) is upright and the front prism (faces camcorder) is horizontal. I did it this way to mount the camcorder high on the appliance rather than low to help with stability when handholding.

If your prisms are same width on the short sides as thickness across, you will need to make sure the corner of the common path of the two prisms is on the inside corner of the 90 degree angle of the prisms' crossover.

I can't verify the pentaprism arrangement as I have no experience with them.

Anders,
The pentaprism will offset the light only on vertical axis. The 2 x mirror / prism arrangement will producean offset both vertical and horizontal. Beware of stability issues arising from this combination.
AFAIK the prisms should have the reflective surfaces metal coated to deliver better light transmission. Have a look on the website I mentioned in my previous post. They say that will incur an extra cost as well.

Bob - how are you going to mount the porro prisms? Are you going to some how merge them or keep them with a little distance?

This confirms your theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porro_prism

Anders.

As far as I know, porro-prisms are right-angle prisms but they are cut so as not to waste good glass in unused areas like my arrangement does.

I think they are cut so that the thickness across all faces is the same as the half hypotenuse distance but I am not sure of this.

My present mounting is a piece of finegrained particle board. After drawing my design in Turbocad in 1 : 1 scale, I printed it and used the paper to make an exact template. The Lexmark Optra S1250 and other members of that printer family print 1 : 1. So does the Canon BJC-7100. Most of the modern printers should too providing the document page setup is correct for the paper you print to and the printer setup is to the same paper.

The prisms sit in the channels which are exact width and are retained by thin metal strips like binocular prisms.

When playing with the prisms, make sure you do it over a soft carpetted floor as the chances of dropping one are high.

I then cut a channel across the front face of the board with a router, then cut another channel across the back of the board to cross over the first channel at a right angle (90 degrees).

Where they cross over there is only about 3mm of board. I cut a hole which is an "L" shape which provides the three ports for gg >> rear prism / rear prism << front prism / front prism >> camcorder.

Once I have this accurately established, I then cut and trim the board which in my case fits into a PVC tube which has a cap on either end. One cap has a mount for the SLR lens cut into it (or a camera lens mount screwed on, the other has the camcorder mount.

The rotary disk front enclosure is glued onto the tube and the rear enclosure fits to the front with screws and dome nuts.

There is a .jpg of both the non-erecting and erecting AGUS35 Australian Plumbers Versions as I call them on www.dvinfo.net/media/hart

Does anyone know where to get coated colorcorrected mirrors (40mm * 40mm)???

Bob, so are you using a prism or just an array of mirrors? I was looking at your schematic - and before my head exploded, turned away - and now I am thoroughly confused. If you are using an array of mirrors (which is a great idea), then I can understand a little more.

BTW, what part of Australia are you from? I lived there for a spell.

I started off with simple mirrors to test the principle then bought in two prisms which do the same job as the four mirrors.

P+S Technik seem to have a bet each way according to their diagram and seem to use two mirrors and one prism.

Bob, which prism did you buy?

Are they free of colordistortion???

Was getting rid of the mirrors because it was too bulky or other reasons? Do the prisms end up doing the same job, but better?