Lionel Linex Stereo

Cameras are not considered objets d’art; nonetheless, they should appear their purpose, practical and eye pleasing, and well, look conventional, not avant-garde. As with any product convention, there are outliers. Take Charlie the Tuna, which could be forgiven if it was made as a premium product like so many drink cans. Take a camera that wants to be a sandwich, the one inspired by a Lego boat, the wannabe fountain pen, or Mr. Potato Head. And I omit the Aiborg, which is just a sorry design. Industry veterans designed most cameras, so they followed standard practices to keep things simple. Now and then, there are cameras designed by outsiders, and the results are to match. So is the Realist, a trailblazer model, and the Revere Stereo 33, both designed by outsiders.

The camera on my desk is an alien. It was made by Lionel, one of the few model railway makers in the US. It does not look like a camera, does not behave as one, and does not use any format known to humankind. It was made by a company that had nothing to do with photography and designed by a toy maker.

Information in print about it is nonexistent; it’s only mentioned on the fly. Online, there are only a few entries that smell much like cut-and-paste, peppered with little fresh data or opinions. A detailed information source is a 1997 article in Stereo World, and it seems the other commentators have relied heavily on it. Me too. Further, the Lionel company had changed hands several times, and record-keeping was not a priority, so no information is available from the company itself.

In short, a common thread in all articles is a tale of a toy company owner who was not content with the existing stereo camera and set out to conceive a better one. It reminds me of the story about the Yiddish publisher who offered an ‘improved and corrected’ Yiddish edition of Shakespeare’s works. The Lionel Linex was lacklustre and impractical, and it ultimately failed in the market. In hindsight, there were many reasons.

• Format was 16mm, unperforated, in a specialized cartridge. A premature concept long before the #110 and #126 were born.
• Images were tiny, at about 1/2 “x 5/8”, and with existing chemistry and technology, it was hopeless for any practical enlarging.
• With only 12 ASA available, it can be used only in bright light.
• The cartridge contained eight image pairs, compared to many more images on various variations of other stereo cameras.
• Quality was shady, and much like the Fotochrome, AKA ‘con camera’, there was a revolving door of returns that found their way back to market at half price, which left buyers confused. Also, as with the Fotochrome, film development was limited to the manufacturer’s labs.
• Market penetration was slow, with the small area targeted at a time, so the media was unavailable outside the launching zone. The stereo format’s short golden era coincided with the time when Americans could break free from two austerity decades, from the Great Depression through WWII, and had the time and means for travel, as the Holiday Inn and roadside hotels had flourished. So, when a person is outside the initial camera distribution zone, no film is available.
• At $45, the camera’s price was lower than most stereo models on the market, so that users could forgive its limitations. But with Videon selling for $50 for a fully featured camera, price alone wasn’t a lure. As more local and offshore brands entered the market, Linex sellers cleared inventory at ever-deeper discounts until it reached a mere $10, which did not instill confidence in buyers.
• As with some other camera makers, the company tried to punch above its weight, creating its own ecosystem of editors and viewers rather than relying on existing, widely available formats. To borrow from another field, long-term users failed to adapt to Palm, Nokia, BlackBerry, and Microsoft’s environments and moved to the broader Android and iPhone platforms.

I was looking at the camera and felt like an action-movie protagonist facing a mysterious contraption about to explode, unsure which part to touch first. As they say, if everything fails, read the manual, and from there it was unexpectedly easy.

• First to notice is that the camera has no dials or rings. Only sliders and levers.
• There are no settings, save for a toggle lever between two aperture sizes. It has a single shutter speed and a fixed focus.
• There is no frame counter, so you know that you take pictures, but how many is on a need-to-know basis. The manual mentions leaving a film tab out, so it could double as a counter. It reminds me of a road trip we did in the US in 1983, where in one of the airports, we got an odd vehicle, the first edition of the Dodge minivan. All was good, other than the speedometer needle that ran circles around the dial, so I had no idea at what speed I was driving. Lo and behold, I was stopped by the police for speeding, but despite my explanation, I ended up with a $50 fine, for which I still hold Doge responsible.
• There is no double-exposure prevention, which was a standard feature at the time.
• There was a flash gun attachment, but I don’t see any sync port, although the manual confirms it is synchronized.
• The image pairing mode is complicated. In the cartridge, the strip goes on a safari within the cartridge that ends with leaving no empty spaces, although the raw images are 70mm apart. See sketch below.

The camera

• The camera looks like two metal blocks bonded together, a half-round hump on top with a front-mounted pair of opera glasses. A fabrication that looks like a haphazard assembly of leftovers from the shelf. All finished with rough matt black.
• The top has the said hump, with a miniature viewer, a record small. There is plenty of room there for a usable-sized viewer, so it makes me wonder. On the right is a bright-plated slider that shows ‘closed’ when pulled out. This is the winder. In front of it is the flash mount, not a standard accessory shoe, but a two-thread base. At the far right is the trigger, almost apologetic.
• At the front are the twin lenses with a slider in between, which is the shutter cocking mechanism. There is no double-exposure prevention system or indicator to indicate whether it is cocked. On the right side is a small lever that toggles between ‘N’ for normal and ‘B’ for bright, which flips a disk with two aperture holes in front of the lenses, a crude aperture technique. This is the only setting available. The lenses are about 70mm at the centers, which is more than the typical 60mm distance of other stereo cameras.
• The fully removable back opens via a slider at its left, aptly marked. A spring in the middle of the back is probably used to keep the film cartridge in place, and a push bar on the right to unclip it. A short version of the operating instructions is printed on the back. As there is no frame counter, it was expected to have a red lens showing the frame number as with the #110, but it is not the case. The manual describes a film tab that should be left outside the camera, and a clip on the back to hold the slack. It could be a version of a frame counter.

From the above description, it is clear that there is no learning curve for the camera, neither in photography nor in its specific use. Just pull the winder and the cocking slider, aim and press the trigger. What I do wonder is what pictures this camera would take, as I suspect it would be on the poor side, restricted to perfect weather.

For the collector, it is a sterling exemplar of a non-camera model, made with every error possible. It is unique in shape and use, so having one is highly recommended. Initially, it was sold as a kit with a viewer and an optional flash gun, so it would be nice to have the lot.

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