scanning viewmaster images

squareballoon

My dad started a company in the 60's called Photo Advertising. He apparently revolusioned some way of developing colour film. Not sure of the details exactly. Anyway one of the cameras he had was a viewmaster camera which still works. I have lots of his old reels with his work on them and I'd love to get them developed as photo prints. Would anyone know the best place to get them scanned? I would also love to take a roll of film on the camera and make some 3d pictures. I have the cutters etc but not the know-how if anyone could help with that too.
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magicbastarder

seems to take standard 35mm film?

DaireQuinlan

Hah, I have a pile of those viewers and discs. I was actually briefly thinking of getting some kit together to shoot and cut my own discs, but then I had a second child instead. Bye bye spare time.

Scanning wise, I dunno. The little chips are so tiny you'd be hard put to get a decent scan out of them. Best thing I guess would be to leave them in their discs and just whack them down onto a flatbed scanner that has a transparency adapter. Scan each of the chips individually, rotating the disc in between each scan. Or just scan the entire disc if it'll fit and cut out the chips out of the scan and re-orient them.

Those cameras are gorgeous looking as well, gotta say.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

seems to take standard 35mm film?

Yeah from what I remember from when I wanted to get one it's just normal 35mm and then you cut each of the stereo pairs out of the film and mount them individually in those discs. Fiddly work for sure.

squareballoon

Daire, if I lent you the camera would you be able to see if you could take some shots with it? I have the special cutter for the mounts and all the instructions are with the camera.
My dad was still taking photos with it in 2000 and no one's touched it since then so there's no reason why it should be working.

Freddie59

Oh boy! Viewmaster. Now that brings me right back to my childhood. What a blast!:D

squareballoon

I know! they're still amazing. I have photos of my dad that I LOVE having in 3D now that he's not around anymore.

Heebie

If it takes 35mm film, getting good scans of it shouldn't be difficult. It's just a matter of how much you're willing to spend on a scanner, and how well you'll be able to automate the process. (Because the frames are non-standard sizes.. most fully automated options are probably right out the window to begin with.)
Epson and Nikon scanner software both lend themselves well to batch-scanning of odd sized negatives. I think Silverfast would be alright, but could be a bit fiddly to work with. (I tried it & found it wasn't flexible enough when scanning things that weren't well-exposed.)
I haven't used many other recent scanner software packages.. so there are probably others.

If budget is no object, I'd definitely look very seriously at a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED, or whatever the current version of that is. You can put two 35mm strips of film, I think 7 negatives long each, into it at a time, spend 1/2 hour setting up a batch of everything on it, and the leave it to do it's work at 4,000dpi with digital ice and dust-reduction on, and end up with really awesome scans.
It's a bit more work with the Epson software.. and since it's a flatbed with a transparency adapter and not a dedicated film scanner, it's definitely not as sharp, but for a lot of purposes it's still pretty awesome. (with digital ice as well on newer models in the "perfection photo" series. Someone else on here got a V700 recently, and I've got a V500, and I'm satisfied & the feedback on the V700 was pretty positive.)

I actually had a "GAF Talking Viewmaster" which had a little plastic audio disc attached to the back of the photo disc when I was a kid. Good memory.

magicbastarder

Heebie wrote: »

If budget is no object, I'd definitely look very seriously at a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000ED, or whatever the current version of that is.

apart from the price (about 3 grand), i've heard one of the biggest problems with this is availability.

DaireQuinlan

magicbastarder wrote: »

apart from the price (about 3 grand), i've heard one of the biggest problems with this is availability.

Yeah, it's the only Nikon scanner that they haven't discontinued, but there's huge waiting lists for it, I've heard of a guy waiting for a year to get his model.

Heebie does indeed have a point WRT scanning though, if they're never actually been put on the reels and are still on the roll or in strips they'd be considerably easier to scan. The problem the OP is talking about is stuff ON the reels. Any subsequent shooting though you'd probably be better off scanning and working with them from there if you were inclined.

OTOH, SB, I'd love to try the camera if I get a chance, and mount up a disc. My throughput is woefully bad at the moment though, ... 2 kids ... looking for a job ... so we're probably talking a couple of months to find the time to put through a roll and develop and mount it. There's also the problem of handover Where are you based ?

squareballoon

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

OTOH, SB, I'd love to try the camera if I get a chance, and mount up a disc. My throughput is woefully bad at the moment though, ... 2 kids ... looking for a job ... so we're probably talking a couple of months to find the time to put through a roll and develop and mount it. There's also the problem of handover Where are you based ?

great! I'm in Shankill, Co. Dublin. The time doesn't bother me. Whenever you have the time really. It's been sitting under the bed for 10 years so a few more months won't make any difference.

I don't really want to spend a huge amount of money on scanning so i think what i will do is find the ones I like, tape them to a window on a sunny day and take pictures of them with my macro on a tripod. thrifty eh?
thanks for all the info though everyone. If this doesn't work I'll look into scanning them properly.

stcstc

lynn


gimmie a shout when you get chnce, you can come use my epson v750 pro flat bed and try scan them in it

Freddie59

squareballoon wrote: »

I know! they're still amazing. I have photos of my dad that I LOVE having in 3D now that he's not around anymore.

It must be nice for you.:)

DaireQuinlan

squareballoon wrote: »

great! I'm in Shankill, Co. Dublin. The time doesn't bother me. Whenever you have the time really. It's been sitting under the bed for 10 years so a few more months won't make any difference.

PM'd you about possible collection, I work up in sandyford (at least for the next month) so if you're about there during the day I can probably arrange to meet up.