Fotodiox Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) 35mm Camera Kit

If you are looking for a new photography challenge, you might try building your own camera.  I recently tried my hand at building a toy camera - the Fotodiox Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) 35mm Camera.  It's a nifty plastic rendition of an old-fashioned TLR camera.  The kit started out packed in styrofoam like this -

My first challenge - finding a suitable small Phillips head screwdriver for the assembly project.  The directions said one was included, but it was no where to be found.

Assembling the side panels was pretty easy.  But the real challenges lay ahead.  Installing the shutter (above) was also pretty straightforward. 

Of course, making the shutter work was a much more difficult challenge.  Fortunately, Emily's Blog from Hoefler Imaging, had a picture of the very similar Gakkenflex camera and I was able to figure out my next steps.  If you are building a Fotodiox TLR yourself, check out the orientation of the long end of each spring.  My directions also had Springs C & D mislabeled.  When you look at the pieces, you'll see where the small spring goes and where the large spring goes.

It didn't take long to have the major components and ready for assembly.

 

Once the camera was put together, there were lots of little things to squeeze in like the film spool and the mirror.  The moral of that story is don't tighten things up too much.  You may need to untighten some of the screws, and squeeze the camera open a tad to get some of the other parts to fit.

Once the camera was all together, it looked pretty good.  I was amazed that the top lens and mirror actually worked and reflected the image onto the translucent view finder screen.  The camera does have one problem that may be a bit of the show-stopper.  The film counter does not grab the film well enough to meter the advance of the film consistently.  Hopefully, the photo lab will be able to develop my film and  make sense of the spacing between shots!  I will put markings on the advance knob, the rewind knob, and the advance meter so that I can do a better job of monitoring the movement of my film.

Despite the film advance problem, I certainly feel like I got some thing accomplished building this camera.  It will be interesting to see what the pictures look like.