P3D early formats

[Rod Sage <rsage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been pondering lately. It seems to me that the turn of the century
professional stereo cameras were 6x13 or 5x7.  Now the 6x13 or smaller
45x107 cameras were fine for making glass slides and smaller cards. What
were the 5x7 used for. A standard stereocard is 4x7 with the views
closer  to 3.25x6. The only cameras I can come up with which are close
tothat format are the early Hawkeyes and Kodak folders or the Kodak #2
box cameras and other amateur roll film cameras. The big Graflex, Korona
etc. 5x7 stereo cameras which I associate as professional cameras are an
odd large size, even larger than the early large mount cards. If they
were used to make professional cards, they would be trimming the tops
and bottoms off and not the sides which would be more reasonable. I
admit a 5x7 card would fit into a Holmes type viewer but you would be
looking up at it. All I can come up with is that 5x7 film was readily
available, so what the heck. But there were so many odd size films
availble then, and stereo views were so popular, why not have 3.5x7
sheet film?  Enlarging and reducing of film was very rare, which is why
there were so many huge format cameras. I believe I've seen 8x10 stereo
cameras also, which seem to be a waste of good film since they would
need to be reduced and early enlargers would degrade the quality.
RDS



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End of PHOTO-3D Digest 3305
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