After an intense bidding war with another eBay user, I won my vintage Kodak Duaflex IV. Seeing that I was a first time eBayer, I set my alarm to go off five minutes before the auction ended, so I could ensure that I remained the highest bidder. It came down to seconds, but I beat him. I didn’t want to go above $30, but the competition heated up. I ended up paying around $35 with shipping and handling.
While I waited for my new antique to arrive, I did some more research about the camera. Since the camera is over 60 years old, the Kodak 620 film needed for the camera is pretty much obsolete. Consequently, you can still buy 120 film at specialty camera stores, but thanks to Kodak and their marvelous marketing ploy 120 film is a mere hair too large for Kodak cameras. [In 1931, Kodak introduced a new film size--620. This was not actually a new film size, but rather a redesign of the spool used for 120 size film.] So, after a few more hours of digging around the internet, I discovered that you can buy 120 film and re-spool it onto the 620 film, a big pain in the butt to take a few pictures. I also, found some sites on the internet where you can buy the 620 film that someone already re-spooled, but they sell about $12 for 8/12 exposures.
With this dilemma, Sam and I took our vintage camera over to Stuyvesant Photo, and we got the scoop on what we should do. A quirky artsy fella named, Pete, helped us out, and he was very excited about our vintage find to say the least. In the end, he said re-spooling was difficult. One reason being that you have to obviously work in complete darkness or your film is ruined. We bought one roll of black and white 120 film to try it out.
In the meantime, I am trying out this other technique called “through the viewfinder” or ttv, which is defined as taking a picture of any subject through the viewfinder of one camera with another. The Kodak Duaflex is great for this kind of technique because the viewfinder is very large. My sister Kelly, another photo guru, and I played around with this idea, and here are a few ttv photos using a digital camera and the Kodak Duaflex IV:
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