Part 3 of the Chase Challenge

Part 3 of the Chase Challenge

And it’s a rather disappointing part. I’d planned to develop the length of 35mm film that I’d taped to an old 127 film backing paper, and post the results. But things don’t always go to plan, and a quick set of maternity pictures yesterday turned into a long chat about photographic lighting… And I never got into the darkroom, and haven’t today.

But I promised more on Chase’s Kodak Hawkeye, so I’m marking time with a little more about the camera…

In the interests of art, I persuaded my wife to pose for me: a rare event, so please celebrate! Here, she’s demonstrating the Hawkeye’s sophisticated viewfinder – you hold it to your face and look through that wife frame. There’s plenty of scope for error: the only cruder ‘viewfinder’ I’ve heard of consists of a V-shape marked on the top of the camera, the arms of the V indicating the (likely) edges of the field of view.
The only other controls are a small button (hidden by a finger poised to take a picture in this case) to release the shutter. Weirdly, you take one picture by sliding it to the left, and the next by sliding it to the right. I’ve seen this described as a flip-flop action – and the front of the camera is nailed to the body. So phisticated!

I have met a wire-frame viewfinder before: Indeed, I’ve owned one since 1970, on a Patent Etui camera. This is altogether a more sophisticated beast, with two alternative viewfinders – there’s a brilliant waist-level viewfinder, and it also has a ground-glass screen for really accurate work. I imagine I’ll get round to a blog about it before too long: for now, I just ask you to note the way that the wire frame is matched by a little bobble on a folding mount to ensure that your eye is properly aligned – just one of the many little clevernesses of the Etui.

When I have my two rolls of 127 film, I can complete the Chase Challenge, and find out how inaccurate the Hawkeye’s viewfinder is – a simple visual check suggests that it could be extremely iffy…