2010/05/17

Dungeons & Dragons vintage treasures - part 2

last edit. 2018/11/21
D&D View-master reels !

   First of all I have to say that I wasn't a great fan of the anime serie for years. (but Rogull72 with his amazing dedicated blog -that sadly disappeared circa 2018 from the web T_T - changed my opinion. :D)
I long ago decided that my D&D collections would not suffer any item linked to it as I considered it was too far away from the RPG... and as well, the cartoon itself was not one of my favourites when I was kiddo... I liked the french version of the song of the opening tho... It still happens that I find myself whistling it from time to time. XD

  But anyway... view-master reels !!! ...any rule suffers exceptions.
(yeah, it's good to let the nostalgia decides sometimes :P)
Just for the fun of using a view-master again I decided to get THAT asap.
(Meaning also that i had to get a view-master too...viva ebay... XD)

   For those having no idea of what a view-master is or how it works, you can have a look here.

These reels (total of 3) are dated 1983 - entitled :

"DUNGEONS & DRAGONS - Castle Venger".
Stock N° 4213 - 4046


   It depicts in 21 pictures the story of Strongheart Good Paladin (heh...) and his companions attacking Venger's castle to free the kingdom of its curse... blablabla... after some fights with orcs and elemental, the fellowship will defeat Venger & Tiamat (Ya know... the 5-chromatic-headed dragon Goddess) who have no other choice but to flee...(heh²...)
All (2D) pictures were avaiblable on Rogull72's blog until 2018... but what's been on the net remains on the net heh and lately some YouTuber created a video of the full story from the Internet Archive (Using my pict above btw o_O).

   Who needs a 3D TV when ya can have a view-master ? o____O;

7 comments:

  1. Have you tried scanning these to see what image it will produce? I imagine the bright light of a scanner on the translucent film should give some clarity.

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  2. Well, I was curious of your idea so I tried... :D
    And got pathetic results. XD

    I tried with scanner closed and opened.

    Opened, the render is almost black. (logical in the end when the light should come from the opposite side of the scanned one) Total fail.

    Closed the best result I got was a blur pic...and even correcting the contrast & luminosity...It was still very very far from Zakiyah's clear pictures.
    I think she must have used a special scan dedicated to slide films.

    o_O;

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  3. Yes, I've managed to get hold of these discs too and tried scanning them but with poor results. I'm wondering whether a digital SLR camera focused into a View-Master loaded with the discs would be a solution.

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  4. Or could also try to use a slide projector and take picture of the projected image tho...
    Maybe easier to carry out.

    O_o

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  5. So I bought a ViewMaster in the end and took photos with my compact digital camera focused into the viewer. The results are okay but would probably be better with a higher quality camera and maybe a tripod.

    1st frame

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  6. Nice try even if it s still a bit blur. But far better than scans anyway.

    You may be right with the tripod. The blur effect should be corrected then. You could also tape the cam and the VM together... I just had a look at all the pics you took... some are pretty ok.

    On the quality of the camera am not sure... maybe you just have to sharpen the settings.

    After, ya may have to correct the contrast and color intensity of the the taken pics... I was looking at Zakiyah's ones and the border is very black at hers when yours have a more enlighted one (more blue)... a sharpen tool could also help a bit.

    And also the intensity and color of the light taken by the view master may be something to work on. Maybe easier to correct a lack of luminosity than the inverse...

    Anyway, great job !

    O_oV

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  7. Incidentally, when you viewed these did you notice the 3D effect? I didn't at first and wondered why it was marketed as 3D. And then on a later viewing the 3D suddenly kicked in; it's not the traditional 3D but you can see that the slides are layered with things in both the foreground and background.

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