In "Paris Through Pentax," photographers Antoine Pai and Matthieu Maury of Maison Carnot capture the City of Light within a Pentax 67 camera. With the help of some Blackmagic, they place the viewer within the viewfinder, allowing them to depict Paris in a new and charming way.

Antoine Pai: My partner Mathieu came over to my place with his friend’s Pentax 67. We just wanted to mess around and take a couple of shots on my rooftop. We waited for some good lighting and took some shots. The depth of the picture from the viewfinder was just amazingly beautiful to us. I took a picture with my phone of the viewfinder. When we came back from the roof, we opened the picture in Photoshop just to do some grading and color correction. At this exact moment we saw the Pentax and the Blackmagic Pocket Camera laying on the table next to each other and it just made sense to do a video.

VVS: How did you design and build the rig?

AP: I’m not even sure we could call this a rig. It's made from a random piece of wood, a few bolts and some tape. We also used two regular baseplates to attach the Pocket camera to the rig. We added a piece of cardboard to avoid reflection from the viewfinder.

VVS: What obstacles did you run into along the way that you had to adjust for?

AP: The hardest part was finding the right framing so we could easily pull focus. We first had to pull focus on the Pentax to find the proper sharpness to then pull focus on the Pocket Camera. To make matters more difficult, the piece of black cardboard we were using to hide reflections made it very difficult to see through the viewfinder. Thankfully the Blackmagic camera offers some great peaking for focusing, so that helped.

VVS: What guidelines did you use when shooting so that the footage matched up for editing?

AP: The rig was constantly moving, but we had some basic settings we were trying to stick to: same focal length, same exposure, and so on. When we rigged the two cameras together, we made sure that everything was attached tightly. For every shot we used the same lens on the Blackmagic, so basically when we switched the camera on, everything was already in place and the framing was the same every time.

VVS: How did you stabilize your shots?

AP: The rig mostly stabilized itself, and that‘s about it. We did not even try to stabilize it in post because we kind of liked this shaky effect, which we think brings more authenticity to the film.

VVS: Was it difficult to adjust your exposure for the ground, the camera body, and the picture in the viewfinder?

AP: It was hell! We encountered some difficulties — not from the Pentax, but from the Pocket Camera. The image from the viewfinder is not that bright, so when we made the first shots, we had good footage from the viewfinder, but the background outside the viewfinder was blown out. So, we decided to mostly trust the zebra stripe setting on the Pocket Camera and use that to find the proper exposure.

VVS: How did you choose the subject matter?

AP: The subject matter was pretty simple — we just went out and walked around the city for five or six hours and tried to find some faces, small scenes, and so on.

VVS: What program did you use to edit? Did you use any post production tricks to put it all together?

AP: We used Adobe Premiere for editing and Davinci Resolve for grading. No special tricks, we just stuck to the basics of editing.

VVS: What was the greatest challenge you faced in making this project?

AP: Dealing with the weather and light were challenging. Clouds were coming in and out all day and the light was constantly changing. Also, we wanted to capture all these small moments authentically on the first try. We didn't interfere with the scenes and people, so there was a lot of searching and waiting.

VVS: What was the greatest reward?

AP: The Vimeo Staff Pick! And, of course, the best reward is interacting with the community and reading comments that are posted on the video. It’s just filling us with pride and energy to keep going.

VVS: And finally, do you ever shoot still photos on your Pentax any more??

AP: Of course we do! We would like to shoot still photos for our clients using the Pentax, and we try to keep shooting film as much as possible. For instance, we shoot a lot with the Contax T2.