First View-Master Reel
Photos taken on View-Master Personal Camera, Fujifilm Velvia 50
Our vintage View-Master film cutter and personal mounts arrived early last week and I have made our first personal View-master reel.
The process was actually easy and I am very impressed with the precision engineering of the cutter and mounts.
All you have to do is load your uncut strip of 35mm film into the cutter by aligning the first pair of frames with the cutting holes. Then use the knob to move the film from shot to shot, it clicks nicely into place for each image.
Push down on the cutter and it stamps out the stereo pair of images you are currently looking at. Take the resulting finger nail-sized film clips, slip them into the tweezers-like inserter, then slide them into open slots in the blank reel.
The only challenge is making sure you have the right side of the reel facing towards you (the one without blank labeling lines for each image) as you insert the film. You also have to insert the film backwards as if you were looking through it from the opposite direction.
I goofed this up a couple times before I paid good attention to the circle and square guide marks put on both the film and reel. I will post about this process in more details soon.
Putting my first reel together only took about ten minutes, and I bet with just a little practice it will easily get under five.
There is something magical about seeing yourself and your family in 3D via a View-Master viewer!
That is so rad!
Who still sells slide film nowadays, and can develop it for you?
Yes, it must be magic seeing yourself in 3D when holding up the viewer to the light.
Couldn’t they manufacture a stereo camera with two LCD screens you look trough, and use it as a 3D viewer at the same time? This will save time and you can delete the shots you don’t want to keep. It’s also back-lit already.
Fujifilm still manufactures slide film which you can buy from any professional camera store or of course Amazon.
Many dedicated labs still process E6 as well, including the one in my side bar. I use Photoworks SF or North Coast Photographic Services for my slide film processing. (Hmm… need to update my side bar… will do soon.)
That is an interesting idea for a View-Master-like 3D digital camera with a pair of LCD’s for viewing. Fuji, Panasonic, and Viewsonic all make 3D digital cameras but it seems they are dependent on a 3D TV to view their output.