DANIEL MAKES A 3D CAMERA

I used to take a standard 35mm camera on my mountain backpacking trips, but was always disappointed in the lack of depth in the resulting slides. The spectacular sense of space, the exhilaration from standing near a ledge with a 3000' drop, all this was impossible to convey in a normal photograph. I knew I wanted to take stereoscopic (3D) photographs but I was dissatisfied with the quality one could obtain with commercial 35mm stereo cameras, such as the famous Stereo Realist from the 1950s. I realized that to get the image quality I desired, I would have to use 120 roll film. I also wanted a horizontal rectangular format, so I couldn't merely link two Rolleis or Hasselblads (with their square formats) together. I finally decided to build my own camera for taking pairs of "ideal format" (60 X 70 mm) transparencies. I have used this camera successfully for more than twenty-five years. I look at the pairs of transparencies in a custom-built viewer, and I have also built a full projection system.