The Toll Gate Ice Cream restaurant in Slingerlands has always been, for me, a mental recharging station. I’ve enjoyed their burgers and fries on my trips to Thacher Park; I’ve noshed on their grilled cheese sandwiches when I’m trying to think of a new photographic concept.
And with that in mind … I tested out a camera that I bought three years ago and completely forgot about. That’s the image you see at the top of this blog post.
Let me explain.
Say hello to the Kodak Stereo Camera, a 1950’s construct that shoots two stereo pictures on slide film, which were then placed in special mounts that could be viewed by the user in a 3-D viewer. Kodak’s Stereo and Realist cameras were the top of the line in consumer 3-D photos, and people shot and created zillions of 3-D Kodachrome slides with them.
Well, Kodachrome’s gone now, and all that’s left is this little gizmo – which I bought on an impulse purchase for $5 at a Schenectady antique store. At the time, I couldn’t get the shutter to work, and I resigned myself to saying, “Well, it’ll sit on the shelf for now.”
“For now” was three years ago. And over the weekend, while I was trying to decide what to do with cameras I don’t currently use all the time … keep them, repair them, or donate them … I came across the Kodak Stereo.
Ah, what the hell. Let’s throw a roll of cheap print film in it and see what we get. I’ve got a pack of Kodak 400 laying around the apartment… in you go.
Okay, now that I’ve charged the Kodak Stereo’s insides … I need to charge my brain. And normally that would entail a trip to the Toll Gate Ice Cream shop. But the Toll Gate Ice Cream shop has suffered a devastating setback. The owner of the restaurant is in the hospital. The medical bills are astronomical. And the restaurant itself is closed – possibly forever. The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help defray the medical costs, and I encourage all of you readers to give what you’re able to help them out.
So if I can’t eat at Toll Gate today…
I can at least PHOTOGRAPH Toll Gate today.
Quick trip to Slingerlands. And there’s the restaurant whose comfort food inspired my creativity and soothed my emotions. Let’s get a few shots.
The camera felt clunky and kludgy in my hands, and it seemed as if I could only get a few photos before I completely ran out of film. The shutter button wasn’t working properly, I had to cock the camera with a manual shutter lever on the camera base.
Even with that … I did get this.
What you see here is the output of the Kodak Stereo camera. The developed film would be trimmed and placed into special slide mounts; the picture with the one left-sided top notch would go in the left side of the holder, and the picture with the two right-sided notches would go in the right side of the holder. Get it? Good, your pop quiz is tomorrow after recess.
Now I can’t put print film in a slide film holder … but I can scan the slide film and try to create a cinemagraph of the image. And mind you, this was done quick and dirty, as an experimental test.
But … I did get this for my troubles.
How you like that?
Yeah, it’s down and dirty, but woah nellie I got something out of the camera.
And something’s better than nothing, right?
Okay. Observations. The camera works … sort of. Print film will work in the camera, but I should use slide film next time – maybe some nice fresh Fuji Velvia to really get some pop out of this bad boy.
Next stop – I have to drop this camera off with my buddy Allan Wade at CameraWorks in Latham, this beast needs a complete overhaul. Then again, if you were 65 years old and someone expected you to work right out of the box, you might need a complete overhaul as well.
But at least … I got this. It’s a start.
Chuck The Writer 
Very interesting. What sort of viewers were used to see finished product? Viewmasters– or a dedicated Kodak device?
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There were cameras that took photos that could be inserted into blank View-Master reels, you used a special film cutter to trim the finished slides to the proper View-Master dimensions. The Kodak slides often used a handheld viewer, you dropped the slide into the viewer, and looked through it and voila you had three dimensions. It’s hard to replicate that on a computer monitor, which is why I used the vibrating wiggle-graph cinemagraph image trick. But … your question just gave me an idea for something…
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Thanks for info. And I hope all goes well for owners of The Tollgate.
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If you’re able to relax your eye muscles and let two images merge (like looking at one of those Magic Eye images), you can use these beautifully. Just doing it with your photo of the Slide above worked perfectly for me, although the two images are too small for me to make out much detail. Having them larger and closer would work even better.
Some people can’t diverge their eyes . But crossing your eyes works as well, if the two images are put on opposite sides.
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I thought about that … and after I wrote this post, I seriously considered making something extra special with the shots from this camera that go beyond what I can post in the blog. Sometimes inspiration comes by in the most unexpected ways. 😀
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Are you SURE there’s no earthquake?
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