old made new part deux




As promised, here are the instructions, although there are already many tutorials to be found on the web. This is called TTV and it stands for Through The Viewfinder. It's a way of adding some vintage crustiness to digitals sparkling cleanliness. Essentially you find an old camera and you point your digital camera at it's viewfinder. Some people use old cameras that have focusing screens, some people don't. A popular camera to use is the kodak duaflex and it's later versions the II and III. It goes for about $15 on ebay, something I found out when I bid $20 on 5 different auctions and ended up winning 4 cameras. woops.

The duaflex does not have a visible focusing screen and though it's widest aperture is f8, the viewfinder doesn't go through the lens and seems much brighter than f8. It's relatively easy to disassemble for cleaning, although some would argue the dirt and crap is why you bought it in the first place.

You're going to need a macro lens, or a bellows setup like I have above. To get the biggest image possible, I used an old manual focus nikon 85mm lens on a bellows. Any old macro lens will do really. Then you mount the duaflex as close as you can get it to the lens and keep it in focus. You really don't need something as elaborate as what I made, I've seen people use cardboard tubes. I built it this way cause I have an extra something in mind to do with the rig.

After you have your macro lens mounted and your duaflex at the right distance, you need to block the light leaks, so you should fashion a black tube of some kind. I made mine out of black poster board and gaff tape.

You're just trying to keep the light from reflecting off the viewfinder. It doesn't have to be perfect. Most designs I've seen use the tube itself as the load bearing element that holds the camera. It would weigh a lot less than doing what I did.

Having shot just a little with this monster rig, I must say it's very odd to shoot with. The duaflex reverses the image left to right and all your motions must correspondingly reverse. I've contemplated putting a lens in the rig to flip it or using some kind of mirror. Also, it's hard to get it up to eye level since I'm looking down through the camera. I have some ideas for how to improve these things and I'll post if they worked out.

I don't have any really great shots using this rig yet, but here's something I shot just to show you roughly what it looks like.



Posted: Mon - December 29, 2008 at 09:18 PM          

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