Well, I seem to have lots of time on my hands so I thought I would try some of the things in this book I received as a Christmas present.

The first project I decided to try was this one…

Seeing as I have a few box cameras and the one specifically mentioned in the article, it seemed the best place to start. Taking photos through the viewfinder with a digital camera. And that is what TtV means, Through The Viewfinder. I had also read about the process on this blog.

First though, I needed to clean the viewfinder of my Duaflex. I could find instructions online for other versions of the Duaflex, but not the one I had. So I just looked for the screws and undid them until I had access. After I had finished I found this tutorial. I wish I had found it first as I didn’t know how to remove the front plate though managed to get access to the mirror anyway. Sorry no photos of that, I forgot.

Then I used some random cardboard I had in the house. At first I tried my Sony a37 to take the photos, but it was tricky to focus as the auto focusing would not work. I put it in manual focus mode and moved the camera up and down the tube until focus was achieved. In the end I gave up and switched to my phone camera. That focused without issue.

The resulting photos were reversed, I could digitally correct that, but I wasn’t bother by it.

Here are some of the results I got from the Sony a37, of course I am restricted to my house and garden.

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And here are some results from my phone camera, a Huawei P20 pro.

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Well, that was a nice use of the day. I much prefer the black and white ones I originally got from this camera, on film. But it has been an interesting experiment, I don’t think I will repeat it.

I will try a few more ideas from the book, though you might get tired of photos from my garden 🙂