3D is all the rage, isn’t it? I tell you, it’s getting so you can’t swing a cat without hitting something that’s got 3D technology these days. I know that I’ve mentioned in the past that I have a small art collection. In addition to that, I collect vintage photos, which I’m betting isn’t exactly a shock to anybody who reads this blog with any regularity. Recently, I acquired a nice stereoscopic glass slide of an actress in a crazy hat. Yes, I know I know it’s not exactly the most macabre subject matter in the world, but frankly vintage macabre photos are ridiculously expensive because they are macabre. For example, in the past it was common to take postmortem pictures of children where they were posed as lifelike as possible with their siblings and/or favorite pets and/or toys. THAT’S a macabre photo collection item. My tastes don’t run that way, though. And it’s a good thing because that would be pretty expensive – vintage postmortem photos can go for hundreds of dollars.
The Glass Slide
This lady was definitely a live one when this was taken. Isn’t she a peach? I decided that I wanted to make a stereo viewer for her, but I wanted to keep things as inexpensive as possible (and still use archival quality materials where it counted). Here’s the shopping list:
- A stereoscopic viewer from a used 3D book
($3.00 used). - Black foam core board
- Shadow box ($10 at an art store)
- 2 El Cheapo LED flashlights ($5 at Home Depot)
- Misc wires, paper, aluminum foil and a switch I had sitting around.
- Black mat board
An Exploded View of the Light Box
So basically, there’s a light box that fits inside of the shadow box. The construction plan was to take the LED flashlights apart and put them in the light box. Then stick the slide on top of that, put it into the shadow box, and attach the viewer to it.
El cheapo LED flashlight set
Here are the flashlights I took apart for this project. The nice thing is that these came with their own batteries in packs, too. So I was able to pull the LEDs out and also the battery packs, and just add wiring and a switch (double pole single throw). A little soldering and voila!
The LEDs were a pain to pull out of these flashlights, but I got them out in one piece. Another good thing about using these is that the company who builds them has figured out the right number of LEDs and what kind/number of batteries should go together, so there’s no need to add resistors and no guesswork on our part.
Next, I measured the glass slide to see what size holes should be cut in the foam board and also the mat board. Then I cut them both.
Mat Board and Foam Core Board
The mat board cutting is one of the only things in this project where a person needs a little skill and the right tool to do the job. I happen to own a nice but basic mat cutting kit
that I used for this job.
Once you’ve got them cut out, it’s time to glue a piece of paper over the holes in the foam board. I used rice paper. I think it’s ideal for this purpose because it’s a little translucent, and also rice paper is naturally acid-free.
Foiled Again
Then I glued sides onto the foam core, built a little compartment for the batteries, mounted the lights, ran wire, and covered the inside of the light box with aluminum foil. That’s a lot of steps to mash together, but that’s kind of how it happened. The aluminum foil serves make the light box brighter. I didn’t pay any attention to how the foil crinkled, because I was hoping that it would also help to diffuse the light.
LED placement in the light box
After some careful consideration and playing around with the LEDs, I ended up mounting them pointing up at an angle. So the light from the LEDs actually has to bounce around before it’ll hit the rice paper. This worked really well for making the light bright and even over the entire pictures when viewed from outside.
Here is the view from the front of the light box with the glass slide and mat board on top of it. So this was put into the shadow box.
Here it is in inside the shadow box. The wires that run to the switch are coming out the bottom there. I used a double pole single throw switch. This means that the switch closes two circuits with one push button. That way I don’t have to worry about the voltages in series or parallel or however I would have to work it out if I had to make it all one circuit. This keeps it simple. And simple is good. I happened to have one of these switches in push button form around because I’m a mad scientist in my spare time, but you could probably find one at Radio Shack for a buck.
So all that was left to do was to cut the stereo viewer out of the used book and then cut it down to size for the box. I don’t know very much about how stereoscopic viewers are built. I’ve seen ones that use prisms to help your eyes think that the two images go together. The stereoscopic viewer from the book seems to be made with two magnifying glasses. This is good because the images on the glass slide are pretty small and benefit from some magnifying.
So: I cut the stereo viewer out of the book, added some black paper to make it look nice, and mounted it to the shadow box at the right distance from the picture. To do this, I just measured the distance from how the book was put together and used that.
Here’s a good shot of one of the sides of the slide. Lookeng good. Now it just needs more steampunk. Or something something. This photo is obviously from the 19th Century, from the clothing and the hat. I don’t usually collect items from this time period, preferring my beloved 1920s and ’30s. But this picture spoke to me. Even if it isn’t creepy.
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