I’ve never been able to grasp photography as I have some of the other visual arts. Sure, I can paint and draw stuff, and I’ve even made a few short films, but capturing a perfect section of reality on a perfect section of film has always eluded me, even moreso when I had to start mixing chemicals to make it appear on a piece of paper. Over the course of my attendance at art school, I taught myself to approach these more difficult arts by embracing their imperfections and emphasizing them to a point of beauty. I spent an entire semester of metal shop by digging in the scrap bin and over-welding every joint I made, and by never polishing my printing plates properly, I managed to pull out some pretty intense textures. Well, I could call them ‘textures’ in critiques - in truth, they were simply the products of my greasy fingers.

So, I have a tendency to shy away from the pristine. I’d rather hear a scratchy LP that a sanitized, cleaned up copy of the same, and I’d rather see a photograph with muted colors and dust spots than a hi-resolution digital image. That’s just the way I roll - knee deep in anachronisms and before-my-timery. If I could hook up an old Corona typewriter up to my Mac Mini instead of this keyboard, I’d probably feel more at home. Also, if the Mac were made of bakelite and rusted metal cogs and I had to pedal or pump some kind of steampunk bellows to make it run. It’s this love of anachronism, paired with some interesting online art communities, that I fell in love with Through The Viewfinder, or TTV, photography.

Essentially, TTV is the art using a camera, which we shall call Camera One, to take a photograph of the viewfinder of Camera Two, while Camera Two is focused on the subject of your choice. Camera One, which takes the actual photograph, is usually a digital camera, whereas Camera Two is a regular ol’ analog camera. Camera Two does not take a photograph, but instead serves as a static conduit for the incoming image. This photograph that you end up taking is visually altered by the unusual systems of mirrors and lenses that the second camera uses. This usually results in various blurring, refracting and prism effects on the final image - and if you’re using an older camera, dusty specks. It’s automatic vintage, and you don’t even need to shove it up Photoshop’s nose.

Since you’re taking a photograph OF a viewfinder, it stands to reason that you’d want a large target to shoot at. We’re not talking about the LCD readout on the back of your digital - we’re looking for real glass-and-mirrors stuff. The most popular camera for this kind of photography is the Kodak Duaflex camera, a TLR (twin lens reflex) camera which features a large 2” x 2” viewfinder and an internal mirror. For anyone born after the last three decades, this is no palm-sized camera. It’s a big, chunky thing that you must hold below you and look down into in order to see what you’re taking a photo of. As a camera, it creates medium format negatives for the professional photographer. For TTV purposes, it has a relatively large viewfinder and captures a lot of detail. Also popular are the Starflex and Kinaflex cameras.

Kodak made four versions of their Duaflex, conveniently called ‘Duaflex’, ‘Duaflex II’, ‘Duaflex III’ and finally, 1957’s ‘Duaflex IV’. Please note that these cameras are neither called the ‘Dualflex’ nor the ‘Duraflex’, though using such terms on eBay will greatly increase your search results from sellers who do not bother to read the labeling on what they’re selling.

I started adding Duaflex cameras to my arsenal of visual devices, right next to the Polaroid Spectra. I’ve never been a camera collector before, mostly due to my uneasy relationship with the device and many unsatisfying photo courses, but my bandolier of cameras seems to be ever-growing. I always take pleasure in subverting devices and formulas to my own unexpected ends. For an investment of well under 20 bucks per camera, I’ve found myself with a full line of vintage Duaflex cameras, with more incoming and about to be subjected to various dissection experiments. Many eBay auctions seem to come with complete camera carrying cases and loads of flashbulbs, and even long-expired film to play with.

For a world going increasingly all-digital, it feels good to take another step backwards in the name of beauty. Check out the photos above, and in our Community Section, for examples of TTV photography, and stay tuned for Wednesday’s instructional about how to make your own TTV device.

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The old joke, told by many a grandparent or parent, says that the world was black-and-white until color photography was invented. The advent of recording colored light, storing it for the ages, was the beginning of a world of color, one where greens and blues are distinguishable from shades of gray.

Many a child then took it for granted, before thinking a bit harder about the concept of a colorless history. For most people born since the 1970s, black and white film is only used as an artistic statement; color is the way everything is seen. Even people approaching retirement age remember color film always being around, with black and white a limitation of technology or expense. Few realize just how recent color photography came into being.

While many inventors and photographers experimented with color photos, going back into the 19th century, widespread color film became available in the mid-1930s when Kodachrome, Technicolor, and Agfacolor films were released. While the availability and simplicity of these films were greatly improved over earlier attempts at color photos, they still had a degree of complexity and expense that kept black-and-white as a common film well into the 1960s.

As such, finding color photos made during those twenty years is a rare event. The average photographer did not have the equipment, skill, or access to developing as professionals did. When photographers were sent with the troops during WWII, numerous striking color photos were returned, even today drawing enormous attention from generations raised on grainy black-and-white newsreels. A single arbitrary photo from 1949 garnished significant attention from bloggers and historians when it turned up on Wikipedia (at right, above). Many of these photos originated with professionals, both the negatives and prints being guarded carefully for profitable reasons, but many amateurs dabbled in color as well.

I, for example, own a rare example of a 1939 amateur color film. While most of the other films in the AOUW collection were 16mm black and white, the enterprising documenters decided to load their camera (or cameras; some parts seem to have been filmed with two cameras) with the new Kodachrome “Kodak Safety Positive” film. Large portions of this film, particularly the interstitials, were done on black-and-white film and spliced in where color was unavailable or impratical.

During the 1930s and 1940s, color movies brought images of New York, Hollywood, and other distant lands to moviehouses everywhere, but color photos of off-the-beaten-path areas like North Dakota, Montana, Texas, and Iowa are a rare treat. Even though color photos were rare, many photographers tried their hand at this new form of photography, and their works appeared many places, from postcards to books to magazines. National Geographic was an early deliverer of color images to a world full of black-and-white photos, but magazine prints are a far reach from an actual photograph.

Color printing presses were a bit ahead of modern color film, with National Geographic starting to print full-color magazines in the 1920s from early color photographs. Because it was much easier to reproduce numerous color images on a printing press than through photographic methods, distinguishing between a photograph and a 4-color print or lithograph is necessary.

With printing processes, a color separation process is used which divides up a color image into numerous “dithered” dots. Most people can distinguish these dots with the naked eye, but extremely fine detail can require a magnifying glass. Also, most printers or lithographers, to protect their copyright, included their name and city of origin in the margins of a print, or on the back. In the case of re-framed prints, sometimes these margins have trimmed to fit. Color photos will often be printed on a heavy cardstock, and have a coating on the front which may range from a light gloss to a thick glossy layer. Often a professional photographer would mark or stamp their name on the back of a photo to identify themselves. Cycleback.com has an excellent list of resources for identifying genuine photos, with a special area on color photos.

Negatives, on the other hand, are easily authenticatable, but rarely survive. Color negatives from the 1970s are already turning pink (a common degradation for color negatives), and ones earlier are experiencing the same shift. This color shift, if it has not gone too far, can be corrected using modern computer technology. Color prints, as well, are susceptible to color shift due to age. As such, care should be taken to store original color photos and negatives in dark, climate-controlled areas in order to prolong their life. Displaying colorfast early photographs (primarily ones using the Kodachrome process, like my movie) is not a bad thing as long as direct sunlight is avoided, but a modern reproduction of a fading antique color photo can be just as eye-catching. Because we so rarely see color photos of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, few people will complain about seeing a reproduction on display. Connoisseurs of photography understand the rarity and value of old color images, and would rather see these striking photos cared for.

There’s no doubt that, hiding in some closet of an elderly relative, there’s a box of round & flat metal cans with the Old Home Movies inside: 8mm films were a common format for recording a family’s lives and events, up until the late 1970s and early 80s when video took the forefront.

You might also be surprised to see some non-family films in the box: there might be small reels that the family got as souveniers of DisneyWorld, or newsreels from the forties, or previews of first-run films. As a kid, I remember my parents checking out a projector and a bunch of movies from the public library, and we had Silent Movie Night — and this was in the early 1980s. For a time, 8mm and 16mm films fulfilled most everything that videos do today — including quite a bit of pornography, which is very collectible today, if your elderly relatives were naughty that way. The rest of the films are available all over the market, at a variety of prices, so a new collector can get started without a severe investment, while avoiding the frustration of not finding anything to buy. Films can be found at rummage sales, antique shops, and of course eBay, without too much hunting.
The problem is: once you’ve found the treasure-chest of old films, how do you use them anymore?

One positive is that the equipment is not too hard to track down; I see them at rummage sales and thrift shops on a regular basis. eBay is an excellent resource, with the basic projector going for around fifty dollars in useable condition. For most applications you’ll be looking for a ‘dual format’ projector. 8mm film came in two versions: the original version, which was a 16mm film stock split down the middle, and “Super8″, the later version, which is the same width but smaller sprockets in order to make the image bigger. The difference in sprocket holes means that projectors aren’t interchangeable…but, fortunately, numerous projectors from the sixties and seventies were designed to accept either frame size. 16mm projectors are a bit more expensive: this format is the kind we remember from gradeschool, when huge projection machines were wheeled in and out of classrooms on an A/V cart. The positive is that many school districts still have these projectors around, and you might be able to borrow, beg, or buy one from them.

One required piece of equipment you’ll need is a splicer and tape. Due to the age of the film and deterioration of any edits already in the film, you’re going to break a movie; it just happens. The old days of scraping film and gluing the ends together is long gone: Kodak made an amazing product called “Presstape” for quick splices of films. Purists might think this isn’t the ‘right’ way to do it, but if your purpose is to watch the movies and keep them in watchable condition, a presstape splice is better than nothing. This equipment is still available in new condition from professional camera stores, and isn’t particularly expensive. A special splicing machine is required — it, too, is available from pro stores — but the process is immensely simplified from the olden days. You place the two ends of the broken film in the splicer, overlapping slightly, and close the cutter to create an even splice. Add the tape — and, viola! — the film is repaired. This can be done without winding the film off the projector, if the break happens during a viewing, provided you can get the movie back on the sprockets.

Because the film is fragile and you might not want to risk repeated viewings, you may want to convert the films to video. Services do this for you, with a pretty good level of quality, but that quality comes at a hefty price if you’ve got a lot of film - and if it’s a copyrighted film, like Disney or a newsreel, they may refuse to duplicate it. If you’re feeling handy, there’s a few ways to do the conversion yourself. The film-to-video shakeup of the 1980s produced the kind of equipment needed to duplicate films. Sima (and a number of other manufacturers) produced a CopyKit: it is essentially a mirror and a piece of frosted plastic. The mirror reflects the projected image against the plastic, and the video camera films off the plastic screen. These can still be found, but it takes a little looking (again, eBay is the place to go).

Working just as well is a piece of bright white typing paper. Projecting at full-screen size dilutes a bunch of light, so set up the projector to fill a sheet of paper taped to the wall. Set up the video camera directly next to the projector, zoomed to frame the projected image. You might have to turn autofocus off, to avoid fuziness turning transfer. One drawback of doing your own conversion is lack of a Telecine conversion: movies have a different framerate from video, so there will be times when the camera is recording an image and the projector’s shutter is closed, projecting nothing. This will create a little ‘flicker’ that is noticeable, but often not any worse than the flicker of watching the film directly. If you’re computer-handy, there are utilities, like VirtualDub, which can change framerate and reduce the flicker as much as possible. Here is an example of an old film I converted with the typing-paper-VirtualDub method.

However, there’s no need for conversion if your intent is to watch them once in a while, popping popcorn and situating the whole family around the movie screen. This sort of ‘family-time’ is devoted to TV shows; give the family something a little different, especially if the movies include mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa in an earlier time. It’s a fun and different way to go through the family albums, and puts these old movies to the purpose they were designed for.