Rise and Demise of 3-D

[joepeter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (john e peterson)]

I'd like to jack into the "Rise and Demise of 3-D" conversation with
something I came across while reading about the life of Eadweard Muybridge
(your spelling may vary)--one of those things that I sort of knew but
hadn't realized the importance of.  One reason that stereo was popular
_with photographers_ in the 19th Century was that it was more portable that
2D photography!  In the days of glass plate negatives, the plate was the
same size as the resulting print; enlargement in developing had to wait for
the advent of bright (electrical) illumination.  A photographer could carry
LOTS more stereo-sized glass plates, both because of size and weight, than
the larger 2D sizes; the size of the camera was a further consideration. 
Plainly, this was less important in studio photography than out of doors,
but it did contribute to the general availability of stereo views, and
hence to the popularity of the medium.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this--I'm not well versed in
anything that I'm reporting here.

I also have a notion, which I've never seen supported anywhere, that
there's a way in which 3D enhances black-and-white photography more than it
does color (my argument then being that 3D would be likely to be more
popular before the widespread use of color).  It seems to me that the depth
information in a stereo image helps in many cases to separate the subject
from the background or whatever else is in the picture.  Color provides an
additional way (along with many others, to be sure) in which a photographer
can distinguish an object of interest; it seems to me that in black and
white it more regularly happens that the elements of an image will kind of
blend together and confuse the picture, and that stereo helps keep that
from happening.  So the availability of color may have helped make stereo a
less useful aspect of photography.

Reactions?

John Peterson (joepeter@xxxxxxxxxxx)


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