[MF3D.FORUM:315] Don Lopp

[Greg Erker <erker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  Don Lopp phoned me again last night and
we talked for about half an hour.

  He has had an MRI (or was it CT scan)
and a EMG and is seeing his surgeon this
week. The appointment was originally
scheduled for late April but Don made a
stink about seeing a different doctor instead
so they scheduled him to see this one
on the doctor's lunch hour. Hopefully they
can fix up Don's back somehow.

  Don has been actively trying to get on
the internet. With his daughter there they
actually managed to get on the web and visit
my web page. But when he tried to get Shab
Levy to email him it didn't work. So we may
see him here someday. He says his short term
memory is shot so he has trouble remembering
new stuff.

  We talked quite a bit about his photos of
Seattle from the 40th floor. He had borrowed
two Fuji cameras with 45mm lenses. It was
difficult to get them perfectly aligned so
that was likely the cause of my eyestrain
at the edges of those shots. He said the
windows there have plastic inside (low E
glass perhaps) so polarizers can't be used.
Regarding someone's comment about tilting
the cameras down (to have less sky in the
shot) he said you can't do that with very
wide angle shots or the distortions would
make the slide unviewable (not his exact
words).

  He said my fisheys shot is reminiscent
of the LEEP shots he's seen because they
all had the tripod legs visible too :)
But the lens in the LEEP camera is terrible
(vs my decent FE Takumar). He suggested I
might want to use the pano mounts for my
fisheye shots to avoid that problem.

  He also asked about how to tell people in
the folio about mounting problems (I think
he used the term "terrible mounting"). I said
just tell us. His viewer has something like
45mm FL lenses so any mounting problems are
magnified for him versus those of us with ortho
(80'ish mm) viewers.

  I asked him his age and found out that he is
72 years old. I had been figuring he was mid
60's and just sounded older from his back problems
etc. After telling me his age he said "I built
my first camera before Pearl Harbor". He put
a telephoto lens on the front of a box Brownie.
His high school teacher told him it wouldn't
work. "People have been telling me that all my
life".

  Regarding the cameras he uses. He started out
with a pair of Minolta Autocords but couldn't get
the shutter speeds to match very well. Later he
used Ricohflex's, then a Sputnik. But in the last
year has shot most with his Rolleidoscop.

  Hope I haven't bored too many people. If anyone
wants to call Don and chat just email me for his
phone number or email Paul T.  If anyone is close
enough to Seattle to go to his house and get him
on the internet that would be even better!

Later - Greg E.