A 1960s Miranda Sensorex with a Homemade Waist-level View Finder – From Film to Pencil Drawing

 

I do like to use wait-level viewfinder cameras for street photography to capture a moment without affecting the behaviour of the subjects by explicitly pointing a camera toward them. I have a short spot in me for TLR cameras, but the 12 or 15 exposure films and the often dim screens often make me miss that critical moment. Using vintage 35mm wait –level finders like 1940s Prakticas or 1950s Exaktas is a lot of fun, but the viewfinders are small and focusing may be a challenge.

Finally, although I rarely use vintage cameras with light meters, I have never owned a wait-level finder camera that had a light meter.

So, my curiosity to use one led me to modify my 1960s Miranda Sensorex ^(1,2) from a prism eye finder to a waist-level finder because the light meter sensor is build behind the mirror, and taking the prism off still shows the meter needle in the focusing screen.

Yet, it is a 35mm camera with a small view screen. To make focusing easier, I used a 4x magnifying glass made for close-up photography for the 1980s Olympus—OM1.

It may not be aesthetically appealing and may look like a military bunker turret (!) to some, but my goal was to see how I can have the better of two worlds…

 

Here is the Sensorex with the contraption I made and showing the pentaprism I took off. The through the lens picture is bright and easy to focus, and the meter needle perfectly visible to adjust.

 

Here is the frontal view

 

So off I went to testing my “new” Miranda.

 

I shot a roll of 20 frames by using the camera’s light meter for 10 frames, and my usual Sunny 16 method for the other 10. The results were quite comparable telling me that the meter is still working reliable after 60 years.

However, one shot I took without the light meter came out most delightful, and it is shown atop this page. I used a Kodak enlarger deep red filter during the printing and exposed the paper for 18 seconds, as the original negative was underexposed.

Not only this photo has all the vintage look and feel, but it is close to a pencil drawing. So, I took my inspiration to a sheet of water colouring paper, sharpened my #2 pencil, and let my imagination dictate the lines based on the feel from the photo.

 

 

Now the circle was completed.

 

(1)     https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2022/06/miranda-sensorex-forgotten-almost.html

 (2)    https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2019/07/national-cowboy-day-in-prescott-az.html

 

August 27, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026