Hot to View Stereocards

Stereoview cards are simulating the natural depth perception of the human eyes. Each eye sees the same thing, but from a slightly different position, or paralax difference. By taking two photographs from two different positions, you can present the eyes the two images that they would see in real life, thus reproducing the depth perception as if you were really there .These three dimentional photographs were an instant hit shortly after the invention of photography in the mid 1800's. The first stereo photos were on silver plated copper and were very expensive and delicate.. Later they were taken with glass plate cameras, like I use, and printed on silver printout paper and mounted on cards. It then became affordable to the masses, and stereocards were in every home from the fancy elite parlors to the farm house.

The earliest stereocards were made to be seen with the naked eye and the pictures were seperated 2 1/2 inches (the width of the eyes). This is called natural stereo. Then came along Oliver Wendal Holmes and decided to seperate the pictures a bit more and made a special viewer that had prism lenses that effectivly widened the space between your eyes. This was totally a marketing ploy to sell viewers and cards. If you had the wide cards, you needed the viewer to see them, If you had a viewer, you had to buy the Holmes cards to use it
.A Catch 22,. and it sold millions. .

Can you View Stereo without a viewer ?

Of course, you do it every day. Hold your fingers out in front of your face at about reading distance like the photo at the right. You will see your two fingers.

Now let your eyes look beyond your fingers and focus in the distance. You will see a little hot dog in the middle of your two fingers. when you wiggle your fingers, it dances around. That is stereo. Each eye is presented a picture of a finger and the

brain merges it into a third image in the center with depth.

Now let's see what we need to do to see these stereocards on your screen. When you go to the gallery, put your mouse on the side of the Window frame and drag it in to make the picture 5 inches from edge to edge. Not the whole card, just the picture. This makes the center of each picture the same width as your eyes. You may need to step through a few picturea to get the resize function right where you want it. Then at a normal reading distance from the screen, directly in front of it, relax your eyes and look through it. The pictures will merge and create a third image, like your fingers did, in the middle, that will be in 3D Stereo.

This is what the card will look like when the image merges in the center. You want to concentrate on the center picture and not look at the sides, it will become clearer and in sharp focus in full 3D stereo. Once you have done this a few times, your brain becomes "trained" to focus past the picture and the images just pop in right away. Then you can put the slideshow on and sit back and scroll through all of the cards. You can view the FCMSA stereocards and my Civil War reenactment stereocards too. You might want to buy some of each. The prints are much higher resolution than on the screen.

When ordering cards, I make two sizes. One is for natural stereo viewing or with a magnifing viewer. These viewers have only magnifing lenses and not prisms. These cards are really nice because you don't NEED a viewer, and can pass them around a table for everyone to look at.

If you have a Holmes viewer like the one below, either on a stand or hand held, you should order the larger cards for the Holmes viewer.These antique viewers are very common on Ebay and you might look around Grandpa's attic and find one too. Everyone had them.. Now go look at some facinating stereocards ! A real treat from the past!