RBT 3D camera
This is another much loved and well used 3D or stereo camera from my collection - the German built RBT X4 35mm film camera. It used a pair of Cosina 35 - 70mm zoom lenses linked beautifully together to perfectly match the aperture, focus and zoom, and it also had the ability to use both viewfinders to view in 3D what you were actually taking. Here it also has a matching pair of circular polarising filters which I had to line up manually in order to get them to match. Apart from the complex mechanical internals, it was a simple, good old fashioned fully manual camera with nothing more than a basic built in light meter.
It has had a hard life in my hands (as you can see!) as I put it to good use for a lot of years and it helped with my collection of 3D slides from our round Australia journey back in 2004 where it was used in conjunction with a pair of Canon SLR cameras. Sadly it is no longer working. No local camera repairers were game to pull it apart and have a look. It has a complex mechanism for winding on the film each time the shutter is pressed, and that seized up totally. It has to alternate between winding on one frame, then three frames in order to space the stereo pairs on the film and use all the frames with no gaps. I could have sent it back to the German manufacturer for repair, but a lot of extra expense was involved in that at a time when I was a little short of spare cash for such projects. As you can see, it has had a hard life, and is even held together on one of the lens linkages with a carefully reshaped paperclip which I used for an urgent repair when the original fell off somewhere near Albany in Western Australia! On our journey around Australia, it attracted a heap of attention from other tourists and even some local newspaper journalists in several areas. I recall a short article about it and me appearing in the local Alice Springs newspaper. Not a day went by on the trip without me explaining what it was to somebody, and I was always happy to talk about it. It was a really enjoyable camera to own and use.
RBT 3D camera
This is another much loved and well used 3D or stereo camera from my collection - the German built RBT X4 35mm film camera. It used a pair of Cosina 35 - 70mm zoom lenses linked beautifully together to perfectly match the aperture, focus and zoom, and it also had the ability to use both viewfinders to view in 3D what you were actually taking. Here it also has a matching pair of circular polarising filters which I had to line up manually in order to get them to match. Apart from the complex mechanical internals, it was a simple, good old fashioned fully manual camera with nothing more than a basic built in light meter.
It has had a hard life in my hands (as you can see!) as I put it to good use for a lot of years and it helped with my collection of 3D slides from our round Australia journey back in 2004 where it was used in conjunction with a pair of Canon SLR cameras. Sadly it is no longer working. No local camera repairers were game to pull it apart and have a look. It has a complex mechanism for winding on the film each time the shutter is pressed, and that seized up totally. It has to alternate between winding on one frame, then three frames in order to space the stereo pairs on the film and use all the frames with no gaps. I could have sent it back to the German manufacturer for repair, but a lot of extra expense was involved in that at a time when I was a little short of spare cash for such projects. As you can see, it has had a hard life, and is even held together on one of the lens linkages with a carefully reshaped paperclip which I used for an urgent repair when the original fell off somewhere near Albany in Western Australia! On our journey around Australia, it attracted a heap of attention from other tourists and even some local newspaper journalists in several areas. I recall a short article about it and me appearing in the local Alice Springs newspaper. Not a day went by on the trip without me explaining what it was to somebody, and I was always happy to talk about it. It was a really enjoyable camera to own and use.