Brilliant Finder

I recently acquired a Zeiss Ikon Tengor 54/2 in good condition. This is my first box camera and I'm eagerly looking forward to shoot a roll with it soon. The camera sports two brilliant viewfinders for portrait and landscape composition. As this is my first experience with brilliant viewfinders as well, I was initially peeping into the viewfinder only to see bright window without any discernible image. Quickly I figured out that I need to hold the camera at a distance from my eyes and use it like a waist level finder to see the image in the viewfinder. But this poses a practical problem especially outside under the sky. Reflection of my head, objects behind me and the sky is superimposed with the framed scene making composition really a very challenging if not impossible task. Am I using the brilliant viewfinder incorrectly? Is there a correct way to use the viewfinder without having to worry about the reflection?

I think you nailed it. There isn't anything great or brilliant about them, and often they are barely usable due to corrosion of the silver. Maybe in the recommended manner it can be used to compose, but pointing is the right idea.

Only way I know is to keep those brilliant viewfinders in the shadow, while you are composing.

And I believe that was one of the better box cameras.

Mike, it's actually a simple and nice camera to use except for the trouble with viewfinder.

The box cameras "viewfinders" were little better, in my experience, than just pointing the camera at the subjects. This is, of course, one of the reason old family pictures often have the subject standing far away from the camera (so as to get them "all in").

By modern standards, even a lot of the inter-war rangefinders had pretty cheesy and small viewfinders.

 

An Argus C3, for example, does not encourage tight composition.

 

I think one of the reasons the SLRs caught on, was not only that they showed, more-or-less, "what you got", but also that even the waist level and early pentaprism finders were much easier to see and use.

 

Argus C-3 tiny peep holes on the user side

An ingenious solution proposed in Popular Mechanics May 1941.