Historical Stages in 3D

[Paul S. Boyer <boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

STAGES in the HISTORY of the Decline, Rise, and Decline of
Stereophotograpy

John Peterson writes in Photo 3-D 1158:
"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?"
     This is an ingenious and (technically speaking) a reasonable
theory, but I don't think that it fits the historical sequence of
events, nor the reasoning of people at the time.
Here's the way I see it.  The old stereograms of the last century
were the TV of the day, bringing exciting views of faraway exotic
places and events into the home parlor.  (By the way, they were
*very* expensive: generally 25 cents or so each, at a time when that
amount of money would buy a good meal.)  The popularity of the
stereogram faded some decades before color film was readily
available.  I attribute the demise of the stereogram to the
appearance of better techniques of printing photographs in magazines.
 In a single magazine, one could get dozens of photos with copious
text for the cost of a single stereogram.  National Geographic
(starting slowly without many pictures in 1888, but gathering steam
just before World War I) was a much better bargain that stereograms.
     The appearance of the Realist and the subsequent boom in 3D was,
in fact, occasioned by the availabilty of good, fine-grain, color
slide film in the form of Kodachrome.  No Kodachrome, no Realist.
People at the time wrote that they were so impressed with the realism
of color slides, that they realised that all that was necessary for
complete satisfaction was depth.  So it was the *addition* of 3D to
color, rather than the substitution of one for the other, which led
to the 1950s stereo boom.
     The demise of stereo was (somewhat paradoxically) brought about
by another technological advance: the modern single-lens reflex
camera.  SLR cameras are much more versatile than viewfinder cameras,
particular if one wishes flexibility in focal-lengths for closeup,
telephoto, and wide-angle: they became very quickly the favorites,
thanks to Japanese productivity which lowered costs to the consumer
and beat out the competition with a relentless flow of innovations.
But when you begin to change lenses, things begin to get *very*
complex in stereo, and the medium could not keep up -- at least, not
in the days before microcircuitry.  Add zoom lenses, and things
become almost impossibly complex.
     As several folks have commented here, stereo photography
requires more attention to details which are not a problem in planar
photography, so stereo always has appealed to skilled practitioners.
Therefore did not appeal to the mass market of the technically inept
majority.
    Another problem was that of projection.  People used to enjoy
having neighbors over for slide shows, but projecting stereo slides
was more expensive, and did not show the views at their best.
    A sad fact is that print film now widely outsells diapositive
film.  People prefer to show prints to their friends, rather than
invite them over for dinner and do all the setup of projector and
screen, and then have their guests fall asleep in the dark.
    Perhaps in a later missive I will impart the rest of the story:
what lies ahead in the *future* for stereo-photography.
---Paul S. Boyer  <boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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End of PHOTO-3D Digest 1161
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