The Kodak Duaflex. This is the first model of the Duaflex, which was available in the UK in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Note the glass bubble viewfinder.

Some time ago I was fortunate to be given an old MPP 5x4 view camera. I've long admired the technical excellence of large format photographers such as Joe Cornish, and fully expected the MPP to be my ticket to a new life shooting big colour landscapes for fame and fortune. But of course, it wasn't that easy. The big, bulky MPP was too much for me to handle; it was difficult to set up and focus, used expensive film and just seemed like too much trouble. However, there was something magical about putting the blackout cloth over your head and viewing the shimmering, grainy image on the ground glass screen. I thought at the time that since I liked the look of the ground-glass image, I should just photograph it with my digital camera. Hmm.

The whole contraption. Duaflex with cardboard snorkel and Canon DSLR, which will photograph the bubble viewfinder.

I didn't think about this again for a couple of years, and then for some reason the idea came back to me. Before beginning to experiment with photographing the ground glass screen I did a quick Google search to see if anyone else had tried it. There is, I believe, an unwritten law of the world wide web; no matter how bizarre an activity may seem, you will always find an internet community dedicated to it. So it was really no surprise to find a sizable group of people on the Flickr photo-sharing site who specialise in "through the viewfinder" photography; taking photographs of images made through the viewfinder (or on the ground glass screen) of a second camera.

It seems that the preferred camera for this kind of thing is not my old MPP, but an obscure 1950's Kodak camera called the Duaflex. The Duaflex is especially suitable because it has a glass bubble viewfinder on the top, which gives an interesting edge effect when you photograph it. To shade the viewfinder from ambient light you need to build a snorkel from black card; this is straightforward, although detailed plans for a Duaflex shade are available here. The camera itself can be obtained second-hand from internet auction sites; I got mine from eBay for £12 including postage. A good tip here is to search eBay for misspellings of "Duaflex" - the camera is often incorrectly advertised as a "Duoflex" or "Dualflex".

Robbie the robot. In this case the subject was very close to the Duaflex so there is little depth of field, and the edge of the viewfinder appears blurred. Canon 5D with Sigma 50 mm macro lens, 15 sec at f/8, lit with two small torches.

When photographing the viewfinder of the Duaflex, the aim is to produce as large a digital image as possible, so that maximum detail is recorded. You'll probably need the close-focusing ability of a macro lens to achieve this. I used my Canon DSLR with a 50 mm macro lens (I bought the latter for my wife as a Christmas present three years ago, and she's never seen it since). Putting the two cameras together admittedly looks very strange, but actually doesn't feel as clumsy as it looks. If you're shooting a static subject, the digital camera can be held in place by a tripod (the Duaflex doesn't have a tripod bush). The sharpess of the viewfinder edge will vary depending on the aperture you set on your macro lens, and also on the distance between the subject and the Duaflex. After a while, dust will accumulate in the snorkel which provides an additional grungy effect. I prefer to keep it (to be honest, my house is so dusty it's unavoidable), but if it bothers you then the dust is easily blown out with a blast of compressed air.

Golden robot. With the subject further away from the Duaflex, the edge of the frame is sharper and the dust on the viewfinder is clearly visible. This also illustrates a peculiarity of the Duaflex camera; the viewfinder tends to ghost, producing a double image. This is particularly noticeable in high contrast scenes, as here. Canon 5D with Sigma 50 mm macro lens, 15 sec at f/8, lit with a small torch.

So once you've put together this wonderful contraption, what should you photograph with it? The limited resolution you obtain with "through the viewfinder" photography makes it particularly suited to subjects that have strong shapes and bold colours. Also, you should probably forget the rule of thirds; the Duaflex has a square format and sharpness falls off at the edges, so it's best to place the subject in the middle of the frame. For the test shots shown here I photographed some toy robots against coloured card, with lighting provided by one or two small torches.

Clearly there is a lack of consistency in my approach to photography - having dismissed the clumsy MPP view camera as too much trouble, I let it lead me down a path that involved even more fiddling about. But so be it. For me, experimentation is a big part of photography, and my regular forays with pinhole cameras, Holgas and home-made contraptions help to keep image-making interesting for me. Often these experiments amount to nothing, but just occasionally it's possible to stumble across a technique that has a lot of creative potential. For me, the jury is still out on whether "through the viewfinder" photography is a hit or a miss - I might need to build a few more cardboard snorkels to be sure. But it will be fun finding out, and isn't that the point?