Re: Franks Bean Splitter

[gnored@xxxxxxx (Gary Nored)]

Tim Smith writes:>

>New to the technique and was wondering if the Franka Beam Splitter was a 
>good way to get my feet wet in 3D?  Any comments in general on Beam 
>Splitters?
>
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No doubt you will get many comments on this question, some for and some 
against the use of beam splitters. I have a Pentax beam splitter. It has front-
surfaced mirrors and is capable of taking excellent pictures. 

Other advantages that may not have been pointed out to you yet are that
you can take photographs with higher shutter speeds using a beam splitter
than with the 50s cameras, simply because they are there. Whether or
not you are willing to live with the quality of the necessarily higher film
speeds is up to you.

Alos, the splitter effectively increases the focal length of your lens, and you
can't put it on a shorter lens to make up for this effect. So it's kinda like
having a 100 mm lens as your only lens. The stereo effect appears slightly
diminished because of this, but many viewers claim that it looks more
"natural."

Also, you are very limited in the f-stops you can use. My manual said f5.6
to f8, but actually it was f5.6 period. This leads to a pretty shallow depth
of field which further restricts the types of pictures you can successfully
acquire. Again, some viewers will insist that any blurring anywhere in the
image ruins the stereoscopic effect, but others will not notice the lack
of depth of field at all. It just means that the image itself must be more
compelling.

Finally, I thought that the beam splitter seriously reduced the sharpness
of my 35 mm images for some time. Turns out, it was the crummy viewer
that comes with the Pentax. Remounting these slides and viewing them in
a good viewer really changed my mind about the quality of the work you can
do with a beam-spliter.

Mine still rides around in the camera bag, along with the 50s machines, and
I plan to keep on using it for years to come. I hope your experiences are as
positive as mine have been.

Gary


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