Only one mirror, actually. I'd love to puff my chest out and say this is original, but the fact is I got the idea from a device called the Linear Mirror Unit made by Hasselblad many years ago. The principle is so simple it's ridiculous: Place a mirror flat against the surface of, and in the middle of the object to be photographed (such as a painting). Place your camera on a tripod in front of the mirror and view the mirror through the lens of the camera. Adjust your camera's position until the reflected image of the camera's lens is exactly in the centre and, presto! Your camera is now dead square and parallel to the subject (or so close it's not funny).

The Hasselblad unit wasn't "just a mirror"; it was a superbly-made multi-part device with front-surface mirror, a "sight" to bayonet on to the camera body in temporary place of the lens and other bits. Hasselblad guaranteed when used correctly it was accurate to some extraordinary fraction of a degree. It also cost heaps.

My little "device" is just a scrap of mirror; it won't provide the accuracy of the Hasselblad unit, but it will give you far better accuracy than you could ever "eyeball", and it'll cost you a couple of bucks at most.

This is it. It's just a piece of off-cut mirror I got from the local glass merchant. This piece happens to be about 4" x 8", but the size is not important within reason. If you ask for a specific size they'll charge you; if you take any piece of off-cut they have around you may well get it for nix as I did. (The reflection in the mirror is just some object in my room; it's hard to photograph a mirror without it reflecting something!).

The arrows pointing to the centre from each side are simply arrows I printed on plain paper; you could draw them by hand or whatever - they're only there as a sight guide. The paper the arrows are printed on is stuck to the mirror with ordinary adhesive tape. As you can see, this is a really hi-tech device!

How do you use it? The mirror must be placed on the surface of the subject; I'm going to use that framed photo you saw on the previous page.

The frame was placed on a table, tilted backwards slightly, resting against a support at its back. A length of thin string was looped loosely around each end of the mirror and then tied to the hooks on the rear of the frame. The string length was adjusted so the mirror was close to the middle of the frame. As the frame was tilted back slightly, the mirror naturally rested flat against the photo's surface.

The illustration above shows the mirror against the photo, supported by the strings which loop over the top of the frame. The fact the mirror is slightly off-level is not important; the main things are that the centre of the mirror is close to the centre of the subject, and the mirror is flat against the subject's surface.

The camera and tripod were then placed in front of the frame, a suitable distance away so the frame could reasonably fill the LCD viewfinder. The left/right and up/down positions of the camera/tripod were adjusted so the reflection of the camera's lens was as close as possible to the centre of the mirror (that's the reason for the aiming arrows). Note that a movement of less than one cm (that's under half an inch) is sufficient to cause misalignment.

The illustration above shows the camera reflected in the mirror with my finger on the shutter release.

IMPORTANT: This device relies upon the lens of the camera being absolutely aligned with the mirror - that's the whole idea of it. It therefore follows that you must use a camera that allows you to view the image through the lens. This can be an SLR film or digital camera, or a digital camera with a LCD screen which "sees" through the lens. In other words, if you're using a digital camera which has both an optical finder and LCD screen, you must use the LCD screen as the optical finder does not "see" directly through the camera's lens. A "point & shoot" film camera which has only an optical finder is not suitable. NEXT PAGE >>