Stereo Photo Maker Update Now Available - Make 3-D Wiggle Movies

Masuji Suto has released the latest update of the world's best 3-D photo making software tool Stereo Photo Maker with an exciting new addition. You can now make 3-D wiggle movies out of your stereo pairs.

The newest version is Stereo Photo Maker version 5.26i beta. You can download the free software on the Stereo Photo Maker U.S. site.

In case you missed it, prior updates to the software also allow you to make 2-D to 3-D conversions using depth maps.

Stereo Photo Maker receives another 3-D Review Online Magazine "Must See 3-D™ Editor's Choice Award" for this latest version. Keep up the great work Masuji!

Back to top

Revenge of the Creature 3-D Blu-ray to be released Aug. 28

The widescreen 3-D version of Revenge of the Creature comes to 3-D Blu-ray on Aug. 28 thanks to the people at The 3-D Film Archive. The world premiere of the new 3-D restoration was held in Bologna, Italy at Il Cinema Ritrovato on June 23, 2018. The United States premiere will be on Aug. 31 at the Film Forum at 209 W. Houston Street in New York City. Film preservationist Bob Furmanek will introduce the film at the 5:35 and 9 p.m. showings of a double feature of Revenge of the Creature 3-D and The Creature from the Black Lagoon 3-D.

3-D Review Online Magazine hopes to obtain a copy of the 3-D Blu-ray to give our readers a review of the restoration in an upcoming issue.. For now, read more about the conversion of Revenge of the Creature on The 3-D Film Archive website.

Back to top

Casper the Friendly Ghost in 3-D

One of the most famous of the Harvey Comics characters is Casper the Friendly Ghost. Over the years, Sawyer's released several 3-D and 2-D items featuring Casper. Here are some of those for your checklist. As usual with View-Master®, there are several editions with minor changes to the packet text or artwork. Editor's Note: If you know of other Casper the Friendly Ghost 3-D items, please let us know.

Casper The Friendly Ghost View-Master® 3-reel packet

Casper The Friendly Ghost Sawyer's View-Master® 3-reel packet

Casper The Friendly Ghost GAF View-Master® 3-reel packet

Casper The Friendly Ghost GAF View-Master® 3-reel story booklet packet

Casper The Friendly Ghost GAF View-Master® 3-reel packet

Casper The Friendly Ghost GAF View-Master® 3-reel packet

Casper The Friendly Ghost View-Master® 3-reel packet (Spanish)

Casper The Friendly Ghost View-Master® 3-reel packet (Dutch)

Casper The Friendly Ghost View-Master® 3-reel blister pack

Casper The Friendly Ghost View-Master® 3-reel blister pack

Casper The Friendly Ghost View-Master® 3-reel blister pack

Casper's Ghostland View-Master® 3-reel packet

Casper's Ghostland View-Master® 3-reel packet (French)

Casper's Ghostland Talking View-Master® 3-reel set

Casper's Ghostland Talking View-Master® 3-reels and booklet

Tru-Vue Magic Eyes Casper and His Friends 3-D Story Cards Set

Casper (movie) View-Master® 3-reel blister pack

Casper (movie) View-Master® 3-reel and viewer boxset

Casper (movie) Head View-Master® Viewer and 3-reels

Casper (movie) TYCO View-Master® Super Show Projector

Casper - Boos and Arrows/Popeye - Private Eye Popeye View-Master® Double-Vue Movie Cartridge (1978)

Casper The Friendly Ghost in Boo Moon 3-D cartoon on the 3-D Rarities 3-D Blu-ray from the 3-D Film Archive

Casper The Friendly Ghost in Boo Moon 3-D 1-sheet movie poster (1954)
This poster has sold for between $2,000 and $3,500 to collector's.
Editor's Note: A movie pressbook would most likely have been issued with the release of this cartoon but there is no known copy.

Sawyer's Tru-Vue Casper Cartoon Theatre ® 3-reel packet (non-3-D)

Sawyer's Tru-Vue Casper Cartoon Theatre ® 3-reel packet (non-3-D)

Sawyer's Tru-Vue Casper Cartoon Theatre ® 3-reel packet (non-3-D)

Casper View-Master® International Show Beam (non-3-D)

Back to top

View-Master® Image Digitizer

Looking for a way to digitize your View-Master® Personal® reels? If you have access to a 3-D printer, you can print this nifty image digitizer that let's you use your smartphone to take pictures of your stereo pairs.

See tutorial videos, examples and download the 3-D printer image digitizer software created by 3E8 on Thingiverse.

Back to top

TCE and the View-Master Plant®

by Scott Tong - National Public Radio

The federal government, on the verge of banning some uses of a carcinogenic industrial chemical at the close of the Obama administration, has delayed action under President Donald Trump

and kept the chemical on the market.

The chemical, trichloroethylene (or TCE) has long been used for degreasing and cleaning metal parts in factories, but has been classified a “human carcinogen” by the Environmental Protection Agency since 2011. TCE has been linked to cancer in several industrial sites, including a toymaking plant in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon.

In Beaverton, Oregon, Amanda Evans-Healy remembers her father having one of the best jobs, at the View-Master plant that assembled those red, 3-D picture viewers once the rage in postwar American households. She remembers the plant fondly.

“We all gathered in the front employee parking lot” one day, Healy said. “A helicopter landed, and Mickey Mouse and Pluto and Donald Duck got out. And that was huge.”

Evans-Healy stands at the site of the plant, which from the 1950s to the 1990s was a toy fantasy land. It’s now a strip mall. Her father worked in the View-Master art department for more than two decades, before being diagnosed with liver cancer in 2001.

“He said, ‘well, I'm not feeling too well.’” Evans-Healy said. “’And I think it's related to the water I drink at work.’”

His disease progressed quickly. “It just was worst-case scenario. We found out in Thanksgiving 2001, and he passed away shortly after Valentine's Day.”

Three years before his diagnosis, the factory announced its water had been laced with TCE, which for decades had been used to strip grease off metal pieces. A joint state-federal report found that workers had been dumping the used chemical on the ground, where it leaked into the company drinking water well. Soon after the discovery, the plant owner shut operations in 2000 and transferred View-Master production to Mexico.

The report, produced by the state of Oregon and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, estimated that up to a quarter of a million View-Master workers over the years may have been exposed to TCE.

The Oregon case is one of several industrial sites with suspected cancer links, including the Camp Lejeune marine base in North Carolina, and a toxic dump site in Woburn, Massachusetts that's at the center of the book "A Civil Action." A movie by the same name was released in 1998, starring John Travolta as a plaintiff’s attorney for alleged pollution victims.

In a new report, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group estimates that TCE contaminates the tap water supplies of 14 million Americans. EWG had previously reported the presence of TCE in more than 300 drinking water systems in 36 states.

At the Beaverton View-Master plant, just five workers and their families received settlement money from the company in 2011. That included Amanda Evans-Healy’s father. Other families either didn’t sue, or saw the statute of limitations run out.

“I feel horrible,” Evans-Healy said. “I really, really had hoped to do a lot more. I still hope someday something can be done.”

To her, one of those “somethings” is a ban on TCE use. Two years ago, the EPA proposed to ban for certain uses of the chemical, in aerosol degreasing, vapor degreasing, and spot cleaning in dry cleaning companies. This became a problem for some companies that have long depended on TCE.

“They didn't have to think about what they were doing with the cleaning,” said Jason Marshall, a toxic chemicals expert at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who helps companies find safer alternatives to TCE. “They just dropped it in and came back it was clean.”

Many firms have invested in pricey degreasing machines that use TCE.

“When they have a large piece of equipment that cost them millions of dollars, then they're not willing to drop that solvent if they've just purchased this,” Marshall said.

Chemical industry lobbying groups challenged the EPA proposal and underlying science. Any direct link between TCE and cancer is “erroneous,” the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, representing TCE makers and users, wrote the EPA in regulatory comments. “We judge the epidemiologic evidence to be neither ‘convincing’ nor ‘strong.’”

“EPA is a politically motivated, regulatory agency, and not a bastion of accurate, objective science,” said Frank Schnell, a retired ATSDR toxicologist and adviser to the American Council on Science and Health, whose funders have included conservative foundations and energy, chemical and pharmaceutical corporations. “In fact, it is their job to intentionally err on the ‘safe’ side.’”

This past winter, the agency under the Trump administration took the proposed TCE bans and moved them to the EPA’s "long-term action list."

To environmental groups like EWG, that is tantamount to “hibernation, indefinite delay, storing it in your attic,” said EWG vice president of government affairs Scott Faber. “There's an enormously strong record that TCE is a known carcinogen. So there was really no reason for the administration to delay these bans.”

Two industry groups — the American Chemistry Council and the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance — declined comment for this story. The EPA’s media office emailed Marketplace a statement asserting that TCE uses in the proposed bans will be folded into a longer-term evaluation.

“EPA has concluded that the risk evaluations for these chemicals will be more robust if the conditions of use are evaluated by applying the guidance and approaches required by the amended TSCA statute,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, Washington chemical law attorney Lynn Bergeson said TCE use in the real world may already be diminishing, noting that Home Depot is removing products containing the chemical from its shelves.

“They can make a decision based on their own appetite for risk,” Bergeson said of retailers choosing not to sell products containing risky substances, “and their commitment to simply not supplying products that contain chemicals that are believed to pose risk, because it's against their corporate creed.”

Back to top

A Stereo Photography hardback book by Peter Gowland sold for $49.99 with one bid.

This is the Little Technical Library hardcover book that originally sold for $1.00. It is harder to find than his full size book titled The Art Technique of Stereo Photography by Gowland. This 136 page book measures approximately 5" x 7" with many illustrations, including several of the Gowland girl photos that he is so famous for. The book was published in 1954 by Crown Publishers. Unlike several books about stereo photography, Gowland explores the "other" stereo cameras besides Realist with just about every other brand of camera, viewer, and projector written about.

Chapters
What is Stereo
Stereo Cameras
Understanding Your Camera
Film and Filters
Composition
Flash
Flood Lighting
Shade Lighting
Close-Ups
Trick Photography and Special Effects
Commercial Stereo
Mounting
Viewers
Projection

Back to top