Tru-Vue Junior 3-Dimension Viewer

I picked up this Tru-Vue stereo image viewer at a photography swap meet event.  It was dirt cheap.  It's for image pairs laid-out in a rectangular format, where you slide a card up and down to see different images in a sequence.

My thought is that I can print up Sputnik image pairs on transparency paper, in the right layout to work with this viewer.   It might also come in handy for looking at "proofs" of viewmaster shots, somehow.  A quick scan and print, and it'd be much easier to "preview" my shots without having to actually punch 'em out and stuff 'em into a real reel.

More Shots on the Viewmaster Mark II

I shot another roll of slide film on the Viewmaster Mark II.  With the last roll, I hand-crafted some reels and chopped up the film in the process.  Briefly, what I did was scan an existing viewmaster reel, then print that on card stock.  I cut out frames on the cardstock reel with an exacto, then sliced up my film and taped it to the card.  This actually works surprisingly well.  Just slip it into a normal viewer carefully.

Click here for the Flickr set.

For this roll, I'm going to keep the film intact.  I'm pretty sure I can craft a viewer of my own that will let me slide the whole strip through it, with a mask that'll only show one pair at a time.  So instead of advancing the usual round disc to see frames, I'll slide the film one frame's width through the contraption.  It'll likely be totally hand-done, but if I get excited and try to 3D print it, I'll post the files for everyone to join in.

First Roll on the Coronet Three-D

Click here for the Flickr Set.

I just got back the first roll from my Coronet Three-D camera.  I'm kinda "meh" about it, but it could be my own fault .. I'm not subtracting the film's mask color correctly.  Also, it looks like this one prefers to be closer to the subject than my Sputnik does.

As you can tell from one or two pairs of frames, it likes to spontaneously fall apart.  Poof!  Playful little thing, that way..

Sputnik has Landed

привет товарищ!  This little moster is the Sputnik 3D camera, and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites.  It takes 120 film, which you load upside down and wind the "wrong" way.  The viewfinder is a top-down thing that unceremoniously pops up four separate spring-loaded metal pieces, which you fold back down one at a time.  There are no frilly American conveniences .. and yet everything is completely adjustable to your precise desire.

Click the portait over there, and revel in the detailed awesomeness.  Three gears around the eyes keep the focus in sync.  The bar under the lenses sets the aperture of both at once.  A manual lever cocks the shutter spring and another fires.  There's a delayed shutter feature, even.  A dial around the right eye sets shutter speed and displays the current f-stop.  Everything you need, with none of the corrupt western extras like batteries and cheery auto-everything modes.

.. first roll on Sputnik.

I've shot a roll of Ilford XP2 Super, to see how it functions.  I then used Anaglyph Workshop to combine the two eyes into red-blue composites, which works nicely.  My favorite shot is the kid by the fountain, but everyone else seems to like the hall of flowers interior.  You be the judge.

Meet the Kodak Stereo Camera

Say hello to the Kodak Stereo Camera.  Handily, it takes 35 mm film.   Teh wikipedias say that these were manufactured between 1954 and 1959, and it's not the usual Kodak "just point and shoot." Mere mortals are allowed to adjust aperture, focus (close ups, groups, or scenes) and shutter speed.

Do not drop it!  You won't harm this hulk of a camera .. but you might fracture a toe.

..click here for the first roll.

To see what it can do, I shot a roll of Fuji Provia 100 slide film.  The results suggest that full daylight is definitely the best.  Tho I can coax better low-light performance out of it, now that I've seen my first tries.  Oh, and it looks like this one exposes the left eye just a tad more than the right.  "We'll fix it in post."

Coronet "Three-D" with a Stuck Shutter

I picked up a Coronet "3-D" camera (their quotes).  It was in total working condition, but then I messed with it too much.  So I had to un-stick the shutter pin.  Apparently shutter *pins* were all the rage for a while there .. don't ask me why.  Seriously, look at cameras from the forties and you'll see shutter pins everywhere.

So anyways, I pulled off the face of the thing so I could look at the shutter apparatus.  I applied tons of trimmer oil (this is why you keep that little bottle when you get a new trimmer) and did some screwdriver prying, and did some pulling with jewelers' pliers.  (Everyone should own a set of jewelers' pliers, btw .. and a good pair of diags.)

So what was the best way to unstick the shutter pin?  After all that, you just gotta pretend you're James Dean with a soft-pack of cigarettes.  Holding the camera with your right hand, smack it into the crook of your left hand.  The pin is the cigarette in this scenario, and it ends up popping out very swankily.

Seriously.  Save the oil for another camera project.  You just gotta smack this one firmly and the pin pops out.  Probably.  I hope.  But it never hurts to have a bit of trimmer oil, I guess.

New Toys

A couple weeks ago I swung by the swap meet again, and I've got a few new friends.  On the left is an Agfa kinda-thirty-five-mm camera -- which seems to take 35 mm film, but how it's taken up on the other spool (which is actually a cartridge) is unclear.  On the bottom is a Brownie Reflex -- which I thought took 120 film (not the first time I've made the custom-Kodak-size-film side-quest) but actually takes 127 film.  And finally there's a classic Sawyer's View Master -- which promises "third dimension pictures in full color kodachrome."  We truly live in the space age.

Time for another obscure-film-size rabbit hole!