[photo-3d] Re: Manual Fed

["Chuck Holzner" <cfholzner@xxxxxxxx>]

I have to say that I think most 3D shooters would like to have the 
oportunity to buy a nice new manual 35MM stereo camera at a 
reasonable price.
In the last two years I have bought 13 stereo cameras (mostly off 
ebay) of the 1950 vintage; everywhere from "mint" to "may not work".  
Of the 13 cameras, 12 of them had problems: A "very nice" Kodak had 
dry-cleaned lenses, slow shutter, and overlaping images.  Several 
Reveres had slow shutters and rangefinder off.  The realists often 
had shutter release problems, one was way out of focus, and a couple 
had broken lenses caps and of course the rangefinder was off on most 
of them.  The Vivid "near mint" has a light leak.  Kindar was all 
gummed up and needs bellows.  Most of them needed cleaning.
Of the 13, one Realist which was sold as a "likely not working" 
camera did not have any noticable problems.

In the past two years I have had two failures in the field.  One was 
a Realist that had the right shutter blades stay partly open.  It was 
a lose screw.  A Revere refused to rewind.  It needed grease.  I 
always take at least two cameras when I go out shooting and use them 
both.

It is fun for me to get into them and fix them but I know that a lot 
of people just want to take pictured with a working camera.  Sure a 
new camera can fail too but it would be nice to have it working when 
you first start using it.

I have heard that the FED is no longer in production and I know new 
ones are selling for less then 1/2 of list price.  I don't think it 
is likely that a new manual stereo camera will ever be put into 
production again.

I can live with the antiques and I enjoy them but it is nice to dream 
of what could have been.

Chuck