The camera is an Olbia 6x6, a French pseudo TLR camera built in 1946. A pseudo TLR is a not a true through-the-lens-reflex (such as the Rolleiflex of the Yashicaflex) but a viewfinder camera with a very large brilliant viewfinder. It imitates the more expensive TLRs and was en vogue in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

How it was done: normally the photographer holds the camara at waist heigt and looks down into the large brilliant viewfinder and sees, reflected through a mirror (and thus mirror imaged...) a version of the image that the viewfinder lens and the film captures). In the case of this image, however, the situation is reversed. Instead of looking down into the viewfinder and out the front, we are looking down the front into the viewfinder lens and out the top of the camera.

I angled the tripod-mounted camera so that the viewfinder pointed towards the grave marker with the angel. The star is caused by the reflection of the sun on the glass of the single-element viewfinder lens (see also the double reflection in the multi-element camera lens itself).

The photo was taken at the Albury Pioneer Cemetery
Albury NSW Australia

© Dirk HR Spennemann 2008
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