I think that anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I like photography, but I’m not a pro. Because of my art training, I love beautiful photos rather than technically perfect ones.
Recently, I got a set of old cameras. I’ve been taking them apart and cleaning them to make them useful again.
It’s enjoyable!
Tonight, I’ll talk about one of them.
Meet my new friend; The Kodak Duaflex II camera
The Kodak Duaflex II was a 620 roll film camera made between 1950 and 1954.
The camera has an aluminum alloy and leatherette body and a simple fixed focus lens. The viewfinder is a mirror reflector on top of the camera. This means you hold the camera at waist-height and look down into it.
Through this viewfinder, everything is mirror-image.
I modified the camera to shoot 35mm film.
You can also re-spool modern 120 film onto a 620 spool, because the film is the same but the spindle on the 120 is too fat. For me, this method is too much trouble. Regardless, there’s nowhere in town to have 120 film developed!
After I fixed the film into the camera, I took some photos around my home and campus.
There are many ‘mistakes’ in this film. There are scratchs and dust on the negative from winding them onto metal spools. There are also light leaks because of the age of the camera, but I’ve left them alone so that can happen naturally. Because the lens is fixed, object must be more than 5 feet away to be in focus. Sometimes the pictures overlaped (or were double exposed) because I had no way to know how far to wind the modern film between shots (beyond guessing!).
These are the results;
These sweet-smelling flowers have already bloomed completely!
A tree near the fine arts building that students like to sit under.
Construction on the new music hall.
A crane on top the construction.
Campus and the town beyond
Anna Belle was out of focus because she was too close!
However, the tree behind her is in perfect focus.
Anna Belle’s eye has wonderful bokeh.
Andrew… not so much.
At a restaurant.
Andrew took this picture of me.
