I was in the studio a few days ago for a vintage style pinup shoot with the theme “Military Cheesecake” and thought this would be an excellent opportunity to try my hand at TtV or “Through the Viewfinder” photography.
Simply put, this technique involves using the viewfinder optics from a vintage TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) camera with a modern, digital SLR. In theory one simply points the lens of the DSLR at the viewfinder of the TLR and takes a picture of the image on the ground glass.
In practice there is a lot more to it…
Equipment
For this experiment I was using my Canon 5D mk II body with the EF 70-200 f2.8L lens fitted with a 20mm extension tube. I used the extension tube because I don’t own the 100mm macro lens. In hindsight I probably could have managed with the 24-105 but I wanted to make the TLR’s viewfinder as large as possible in the frame.
The TLR I used was a Delmonta that hails from around the middle of the 20th Century.
I had the TLR sitting on a table and mounted the 5DmkII on a tripod.
Issues…
Focus and Alignment
Focussing was an absolute nightmare. Although the studio was light it wasn’t bright light and the image on the Delmonta’s viewfinder was very dark. Een with the magnifier it was tricky to see if the TLR was properly focused or not.
If the Delmontas was hard to focus, the 5DmkII was even harder! Getting it lined up and square on the viewfinder was much trickier than I’d anticipated and it wasn’t helped by the darkness of the viewfinder image. I found it almost impossible to see whether the image I was looking at was sharp or not.
Light Loss
Light loss was an unexpected issue and came in two forms.
Firstly there was the darkness of the viewfinder as I mentioned above. This actually accounted for several stops of difference in exposure between the how the lights were set up for a normal shot and the reading I was getting through the TLR’s viewfinder. The only way to get any kind of visible image was to use some video hot lights on the subject in addition to the studio flash.
Considering the normal exposure was 1/125th, f/8 @ ISO125 the TtV exposure was made at 1/125th, f/4 @ ISO125 PLUS the very, very bright hot lights.
Secondly there was the light fall off. This is actually exagerated in the image above as there is a gridded separation light on the background. Nevertheless if you look at the original frame the subject’s head needed about 2 stops more light than her body (courtesy of the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 3). I’ve also added a graduated exposure adjustment to lighten the whole of the top of the frame further still.
Conclusion
I deem my first adventure into TtV to actually be a complete failure.
It took a lot longer to set up than anticipated owing to a few emergent issues on the day. These were all partially solved to produce the image above but it still isn’t as good as I believe I can make it. For instance I’ve tried a few subsequent experiments with a different TLR and had some much better results.
Nevertheless, this is a technique I’m going to persevere with. Overall I was pleased with thedirection I was going in and believe I’ve made significant progress. There is still a long way to go but if the image above is anything to go by, I’m starting to get the look and feel I was trying to create with this.
Photoshop?
I had considered manufacturing this vintage feel in Photoshop and may well resort to this in the future. After all, one simple texture and a few photoshop actions are significantly quicker than having to set up the TtV configuration and will yield equivalent and perhaps much more controllable results.
Links
Through the Viewfinder Flickr Group
Through the Viewfinder Tutorial, Russ Morris
