Stereo Realist - Accessories and Mounting Services

Accessories and Mounting Services

Because the Realist effectively created a new format of slide, its users needed a new line of accessories and services. The David White company obliged by producing a whole system which included everything needed to take, mount, view, and store stereo slides.

Among the mounting accessories were a complete mounting kit which included sorting tray, film cutter, and tweezers, three different types of aluminum masks, cardboard folders, a mounting jig, and mounting glass. Mounting glass could be secured with mounting tape or with plastic permamounts.

Permamounts were considered premium mounts with a label on one side and a neat viewing window on the other. They were considered suitable for projection because the rigid plastic construction was stiff enough for automatic magazines but no plastic covered the image area so there was no interference with polarization. The operator of the projector did need to be careful not to leave the same slide in the projector for too long though, because the heat would eventually start to warp the mount.

Viewing accessories included several types of slide viewers, the Realist stereo projector, and polarized glasses.

There were also various types of slide storage cases available, some of which could also accommodate the viewer as well.

Most of these accessories were also made by other companies, some of which were more versatile than the Realist offerings. The Stereo projectors made by TDC (Three Dimension Company), for example, were far more popular than the Realist stereo projector. Some users preferred cardboard slip in mounts made by 3rd parties because of their ease of use even though they were generally considered to be of lower quality and were not suitable for projection. The Brumberger binder frames and mounting glass were very popular among users of Stereo projectors.

All of these can be found on eBay in used or occasionally NOS condition and some of them (or their modern equivalents) are still manufactured.

The Realist stereo mounting service used several different types of mounts during its run. The earliest mounts used a type of aluminized cardboard mask inside a cardboard foldover. This tended to warp with exposure to humidity thus changing the alignment of the film chips. In older slide collections, the film chips may have slipped to the point that the slide is unviewable without readjustment and one film chip may have even fallen out!

Later slides from this service were usually in "precision mounts" which contained an aluminum mask inside the same style of cardboard foldover. The precision mounts may or may not have the words "precision mount" printed on the outside.

Kodak also had a stereo slide mounting service. Whereas the mounts used in the Realist service appear to have been designed for hand mounting, the Kodak mounts look like they were made exclusively for high volume machine mounting. The Kodak mounts are all cardboard and have the appearance of being a single piece of cardboard. Purists didn't recommend them for projection because the stereo window wasn't very precise and the mount wasn't stiff enough for the automatic feeding mechanism of some deluxe stereo projectors.