[MF3D.FORUM:1072] Re: Mounting issue

[Stuart Johnson <gcsphoto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Glickman wrote:

> George...
>
>       Although if you look at my rig, you would think the cameras look
> square...quite often my left image has more right scene in it then my right
> image.  The first problem is, I find it hard to pick the right image for
> left...but after viewing, it now becomes more obvious when its wrong.
>
>        But more importantly, I think cameras out of alignment must be
> somewhat degrading to the image.... it obviously won't destroy it, but I am
> guessing my chromes would improve if the lenses were more parallel.  I
> realize that a previous post claimed this was not the case...but a few
> degrees goes a long way towards infinity.
>
> Regards
> Bill G

.Bill,

        It is wise to try to keep the cameras perfectly parallel when shooting.
Also, it is
important to keep them on the same horizontal plane.  Based upon what I have
learned, it seems that the only time you can get away with "toeing-in" is when
you
have a very limited background (not infinity) and actually pretty close to the
foreground objects. Say for example shooting a table top in a room.

For normal stereophotographs with infinity for the background I do the
following:
 I always take a look through each lens to make sure that the right camera's
center is even with or slightly to the RIGHT of the center of the LEFT lens. It

is also fairly easy to check horizontal leveling this same way.  I recomend a
GRID viewfinder for this, it make all these 'checks' a lot easier to do.

    Of course, the real magic comes in the mounting process. David Lee
and Dr. T  each have excellent hand-outs to show how this works.  If there
are slight alignment errors when composing your picture, these can usually be
corrected in the mounting process.

Good luck Bill,

            -Stuart