Not long after the Brewster viewer first appeared and the interest in stereoscopy grew the market for viewers grew likewise and many designs of stereoscopes appeared including some very fine British viewers. Read about box sliding viewers, book viewers, viewers with cabinets and many more.
It’s probably safe to assume that most people were introduced to 3D images via View-Master. Introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the handheld 3D viewer was a very popular format that sold literally billions of products from the 1940s right on through the 2000s. Here you’ll find a brief history of View-Master, some images from my collection and key content categories that may be of interest to those looking to start or grow their collections.
The scenes from historic documentaries presented here were up until now only viewable in 2D, but thanks to the horizontal movement of the camera and/or the object within the video, I was able to ‘extract’ stereo pairs by combining selected stills without the use of (artificial) manipulation. As a result, I was able to create 3D images from 2D video, in some cases almost a century “after the fact”.
The stereo of the tree with multicolored foliage below was my original inspiration for this series: it has so many patches of various colors that when you mirror certain slices, different colors abut one another, and it winds up looking like a pastiche of many trees rather than just one.
We have some fun and informative presentations in store for you! Come hang with your fellow 3D enthusiasts for a little while and enjoy some wonderful iPhone stereo photography, 3D slicing and View-Master nostalgia. Join us on Sunday, June 6th 2021 at 2:00 pm EDT / 18:00 GMT / 8:00 pm CEST
The following collection is a small sample of my favorite cloud stereo photos from the last few years while flying over Europe and the Southwestern portion of the United States.
The Brewster stereoscope was without doubt the singular most popular design of stereoscope from 1851 until the 1930’s when new formats took over and during this time its basic design changed very little. Though, there soon was a broad variety of improvements and elaborate decorations.
Check out the fabulously crystal-clear version of Diego’s informative stereo photography presentation of our last meeting! There were bandwidth issues during his presentation but now you can see all his 3D imagery clearly. And if you missed Dominik’s pinhole stereo camera production tutorial or Pascal’s Taxiphote talk, please check out those, too — great stuff!
The technique how to free view varies a bit from person to person, and it is simply difficult to explain in words. Last but not least, free viewing has some advantages, but is not necessary if you have a viewer. But with a little practice you will experience a whole new dimension of photography!
Carleen’s photography reflects her ongoing passion for nature, and the solidity and reassurance nature brings. See six of her most calming and peaceful stereo photos here.
