<p>A bit late to the conversation, but I've been enjoying stereo photography for quite a few years now. I started off with a Stereo Realist and then moved on to a Wollensak Stereo 10. Here's a few tips and observations from my personal experience...</p>
<p>Always keep the camera horizontally level, otherwise the two photos will be a little mismatched and difficult/uncomfortable to view. Some cameras came with an inbuilt bubble level to help with this. The Stereo Realist is not one of those unfortunately, but my Wollensak is, and it is an extremely useful tool for me.</p>
<p>Back in the day camera labs would mount the stereo pairs into stereo mounts for you, but that service is long gone. You'll have to buy your own supplies and learn some DIY stereo mounting techniques.</p>
<p>The left and right images must be very carefully positioned when mounting, otherwise the slides are very uncomfortable to view. They have to be exactly horizontal (not tilted at all), exactly level with each other, and positioned at a certain distance apart to achieve the correct "stereo window" (which is impossible to explain in a short paragraph like this).</p>
<p>My Realist often had slightly overlapping frames and generally uneven frame spacing (a common issue for Realists from what I've read), a problem that my Wollensak doesn't have.</p>
<p>I have a Sputnik too but have never used it due to a shutter problem. I have read that they have numerous issues with light leaks, internal reflections and other problems, and there are some good resources online on how to modify the camera to eliminate those problems.</p>
<p>I've never tried a stereo projector, but I get beautiful results with a Realist hand held viewer. There are sellers on eBay selling LED bulbs to replace the dim yellow torch bulbs in these viewers, and they make a WORLD of difference.</p>
<p>After getting my films developed I scan each frame before cutting and mounting them. This allows me to possibly make stereo cards from the scans (which I've never tried to do to be honest), view the scans in 3D in the crossview format on my computer, and create stereo photo files for viewing on my 3D TV.</p>
<p>All up stereo photography is a world of fun and I'm sure you'll love seeing the results. My favourite purpose for my camera is family snapshots. Those photos will be sentimentally priceless in decades to come, as I'm sure childhood 3D slides will be almost unique in the future.</p>
<p>On last amusing little comment... I showed some photos to my boss at work once through the hand-held Realist viewer, and the photos were so lifelike in 3D that I caught him more than once turning his head to see more of the scene, as if he was looking at the real world through binoculars :-)</p>