Through the Viewfinder

I discovered Through The Viewfinder (TTV) photography last spring on Flickr and thought it was a really beautiful way of creating images. I have an old Rolleicord which I thought would be perfect as it has a ground glass viewfinder which has a really lovely look, it's quite speckled with quite heavy centre hotspot, but it's very subtle and I love the cross hairs. I constructed a ridiculous contraption from foam which sits ontop of the Rolleis viewfinder which supports my digital camera at the top. When I was using it last year I was using my happy snappy - a Fuji Finepix F10 which seemed to work quite well as it's nice and light with a good macro setting. But I've recently fallen out of love with that camera, I find it very irritating as it keeps resetting itself randomly which I find very annoying to have to reset everything. So I decided to attach the Rollei to the tripod in my new studio set up at home and have a bash with the D300. I did work as the photos here show, but it's still very hard work even when I don't have to hold the Rollei which is very heavy (this is why I could only use the happy snappy previously as I was shooting without a tripod and there's no way I could have juggled heavy metal Rolleicord, long foam contraption and relatively cumbersome Nikon D70 - as well as dealing with a long zoom lens!). So it was quite a releif to be free of the weight. But it was still very awkward, but I'm fairly pleased with the results although I do need to find some bigger subjects as the focal distance on the Rollei is massive and the smallish things I was using do rather receed into the distance and look tiny! Later on I had a go with Peter's Lumix, which I think may be the final solution as it's really small and light, has a great lens, zoom and macro and it's 10mpx and can shoot in RAW too. When I next have a go at TTV I shall definitely use the Lumix and I mustn't be dissuaded from trying again as I am determined to crack this. TTV images seem to sell really well on Etsy where I am determined to find a really good look for my shop and have a few really good lines which I can churn out and sell hundreds of beautiful cards, prints and postcards.