P3D Re: early formats

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rod Sage wrote:
> 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.
>

I'm not that much of a photo-historian, but here's my guess.  5x7 is a
standard film size.  You can still get some films in this size, and it
may regain popularity since the film is nearly twice the size of 4x5
(making it a good size for contact prints), but the equipment is much
less bulky than 8x10.  By making a 5x7 stereo camera the manufacturer
could offer the same (or very similar camera) as a mono camera, or
offer the ability to switch.  I recently purchased an old
Gundlach-Manhattan Optical Co. Criterion 5x7 camera that looks like it
was originally designed to accept a stero lensboard.  5x7 also offers
the ability to crop the image when printing cards for Holmes viewers.

> 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.
> 

Not if you don't reduce the images.  I've seen mirror based stereo
viewers that let you view large (8x10) paris of prints.  A pair of
8x10 transparencies (each about the size of a 13 inch TV screen) would
be awesome to view.

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Dee Dee!  Don't touch that button!"
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