Printing View-Master reels

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Printing View-Master reels

Postby drwr » Sat Mar 08, 2014 7:53 pm

There are plenty of online services to make a lenticular print of your 3-D photos, and it's easy enough to make your own stereoscope-compatible prints. And, of course, 3-D monitors are inexpensive these days and provide an easy, high-quality way to view your photos. And if not that, there's always anaglyphs.

But I wanted to make View-Master reels, and I spent some time searching for a service to print them for me. (There are services that will print the slides, and sell you the cardboard and glue to assemble the reels yourself--a fine option, but a lot of by-hand work. Here in the 21st century, surely someone can print the whole reel at once!)

I did finally find a service which I'm pretty happy with. The reels aren't cheap, at $20 for a single reel with 7 photos (but most of this price is for set-up; you can print multiple copies at sharply reduced prices), and the resulting images are really grainy--much detail is lost at this scale. This is not the way to appreciate the fine quality of a well-crafted stereo photo. But even with all that, there's nothing quite like the way people react when they look through a View-Master and see their own face within, in 3-D. Everyone knows what a View-Master is and how to use one, and everyone has a soft spot in their deep, childish heart for them.

I have no affiliation with this web service, but I do recommend image3d.com for anyone who's willing to accept these caveats for a piece of red plastic joy in their hands. Although their primary business seems directed at people who think it's a good idea to make non-stereo View-Master reels from ordinary 2-D photos (which seems pointless to me), they also do offer a well-hidden service where you can upload 7 MPO's, cropped to 1112x955 pixels, and they'll print them into a stereo reel for you. You can find the link for this service here: http://image3d.com/stereo/ .

David
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Re: Printing View-Master reels

Postby linuxluver » Sun Mar 09, 2014 9:24 am

If you were to charge for making Viewmaster reels you might risk being sued by the people who hold the patent on such things. That may explain why people will sell you the readies......but you have to do the final step yourself. I'm just speculating here....but it would fit what you are describing. Either that or they don't want to do the hand work that you also don't want to do. Maybe you could make a template and go into business yourself...
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Re: Printing View-Master reels

Postby drwr » Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:58 pm

A fine guess, but as the rest of my post explains, I *did* find a service that will print the whole reel all at once. ;)
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Re: Printing View-Master reels

Postby linuxluver » Mon Mar 10, 2014 9:05 am

drwr wrote:A fine guess, but as the rest of my post explains, I *did* find a service that will print the whole reel all at once. ;)


Good.....I see it's "well hidden". :-)
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Re: Printing View-Master reels

Postby drwr » Mon Mar 10, 2014 10:13 pm

Yes, I see now it is indeed well hidden, my apologies. I do tend towards overly wordy.
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Re: Printing View-Master reels

Postby Gregos » Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:06 am

Hi,
I recently used their service, everyting went flawless ,very nice comunication, and found their products are great ,from reels to viewers to boxes.
Sure they re a bit grainy, but people really enjoy watching those .And the resolution difference really only strikes you when you compare disk to disk with photo reels .
The good news is that they re suposed to upgrade their printer this month ,adding 20 % definition,sometimes helps a lot (see occulus rift for example .. )
I ll test again as soon as they do .
Oh and they re not hiden, they just can t use the viewmaster name as it s copyrighted (and was bought by mattel last time i checked ..) and they re site is a bit hard to foloow,took me long before i finaly ordered, but i m happy i did .

If you want those photo reels, seems to have this adress :
http://studio3d.com/custom-viewmaster.htm
but charges 150 $ just for setup (and 350 for image3d setup,with is suposed to be free, so i m not sure i m reading correctly .. )

Also found this company in europe but had no reply so far :
http://www.3dworldshop.com/epages/54403 ... 22/vmreels

Best luck i had online was with "custom viewmaster" search .

If you know any other solution (where do they let you cut the films yourslef? i have tons of empty reels i bought long ago .. ) , feel free to message me .

( Lastly and half off-topic , i made a 3dprint of a viewmaster for my little plushies, anyone would need one for miniature project, just ask,i can export it anysize and make it avaible on shapeways ,i wont charge any .
http://phereo.com/image/5418ccfdd475fe51110002a5 )
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