© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Seeing double again: more stereo viewers

As I have written before, stereoscopy and stereo-photography are part of a popular niche in photography and collecting. Some people, for example Ron Blum, of South Australia, have collected vast libraries of stereo images and are experts in the field. For myself, it's a peripheral interest, but that hasn't stopped me from accumulating a few hundred traditional stereoview cards and also a handful of different stereoscopes. One with particular resonance for me is the bright red plastic "View-a-Scope" issued by the Sanitarium food company in the 1960s to view a couple of series of stereo cards…

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Read more about the article Seeing double: 3D in vintage stereographs
3D viewing in the early 20th century. Photo by William Fraser

Seeing double: 3D in vintage stereographs

Humans have two eyes for a good reason. Viewing the same scene from two close but very slightly different locations creates an impression of depth. The brain, processing visual data from each eye, builds a scene in which it's easy to determine which elements are near and which are far away. We can learn to interpret a two-dimensional image - like a painting or a photograph - as representing depth of field, but of course it is never the same as viewing the real item or scene with two eyes. In the 1830s when photography was…

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Thornthwaite, via Scone. Some of the Hunter’s earliest photographs

All the images and most of the information in this post were supplied by members of the Docker and Brougham families, via Malcolm Docker. . Among the earliest photographs known to have been made in the Hunter Valley of NSW is a series taken in the far reaches of the upper valley, some of which may have been taken as early as the late 1840s. Joseph Docker. . These images, produced during the infancy of the science and art of photography, were created by Joseph Docker, a well-to-do settler from England who built a notable home…

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