3D View-Master Reel Scanning

(Please note that we will not scan any copyright protected View-Master Reels. These will include any commercial reels, travel reels or cartoon reels. Don't send them to us because we will not scan them under any circumstances. They have to be personal, family View-Master reels.)

If you have Personal, Non-Copyright protected View-Master Reels that you would like to be able to view on your computer, we can convert your personal View-Master Reels to individual images

We will scan your 3D View-Master Reels at 3200ppi, enhance the images for you, make the slide shows and put them on a disk for you. The images can be copied off the disk and put on your hard drive and you can print them out on your printer or you can take our disk to your local One Hour Photo and have them make prints for you or we can make the prints for you.

Because of the extra handling involved in scanning the 3D View-Master Reels, we have to charge more than our standard 35mm scanning rates.

We will pick the best image out of each pair and we will output your images to JPEG format, saved at a high resolution of ten. Each View-Master reel will be scanned into its own individual folder onto a disk.

Because we cannot automate the scanning process for the 3D View-Master reels, we have to charge more than our normal scanning fees. Each View-Master reel has seven pairs of films.

Each reel scanned is subject to a flat fee of $10 regardless of how many films you need off the reel. There can be no bulk scanning price because of all the work involved. This is our bare minimum price. If you are interested, see the "3D Digital" section of the order form.

Our normal service is to  trim off the rounded corners of the scan. If, by trimming the image down to remove the rounded corners we will lose important parts of the image, we will leave the rounded corners in. If we don't lose anything important, we will trim off the corners.

As an additional part of our View-Master Reel scanning service, we can also separate out your scans so that you can view the images on your computer screen in 3D if you have the proper 3D glasses. The current price for this service is ten dollars per slide.

View-master reels were not originally marketed to children as they are today. The first reels were travel and scenic related. The View-master viewing system was invented by William Gruber. He put seven sets of images on a circular disk which was put into a special viewer. The sets of images were taken with special 3D cameras which took two pictures at the same time with two different lenses. The lenses were separated by about the distance between two eyes. When viewing these two images through the View-Master viewer it produces an amazing three dimensional image with a sense of depth. Sawyer's, a company that sold printed post cards, saw the beauty and marketability of the View-master system and soon View-master outsold the post cards.  The View-Master patent has been owned by many different companies down through the years: GAF, View-Master International Group, Ideal Toy Company, View-Master Ideal Group, Tyco Toys, Mattel and most lately by Fisher-Price. Now the newer reels are mainly of cartoon characters and are marketed to children. More than a billion View-Master reels have been manufactured since the first introduction in 1939.

  Pictures for this type of 3d Stereo viewer were taken with special 3d Stereo cameras like the one to the right. Film from this type of camera could be developed and then mounted  in the special View-Master Reels and then viewed in the View-Master Viewer.

It is possible for a person to take their own personal 3d Stereo pictures by taking one picture and then shifting the camera about 2 inches to the left or right and taking another picture. This is replicating what the human eyes see from the left and the right eyes. The two pictures would then have to be mounted in 3d slide holders.