Novel Mounting Method

[s.spicer@xxxxxxxxx]

John Bercovitz and I were discussing off-line some methods for mounting
slides. One came up that may not have been mentioned before.

Summary
-------

If the film gate in the camera is modified so that it exposes some "near"
and "far" aligment notches in the unused portion of the film, these could
be used to align the slides to the correct separation when mounting them
(with a gauge like the "near" and "far" one sold by Reel 3D).

Detail
------

The bottom edge of the film gate could be modified so that the left gate
has one "reference" notch, and the right film gate has two notches - a
"near" and a "far" notch. The distance between the reference-notch and the
far-notch would be the same as the lense spacing (eg: 70mm in a Realist).
The distance between the reference-notch and the near-notch would be 1.2mm
more than the lense spacing - 71.2mm (for the Realist format).

When mounting the slides, the image formed by the notches could be aligned
with marks on an aligment gauge so that the near and far points could be
set quickly and accurately.

On my particular light box and mounting jig, I think that there is enough
stray light around the perimeter of the image to still be able to see such
alignment notches even though they are masked by the aperture of the mount.
However - your mileage may vary. This is possibly the main limitation of
this method. To improve the visibility of the notches, it is best to have a
well exposed film in that area - hence the reason for modifying the bottom
of the film gate where there is often more light (from sky or whatever) to
expose the film.

I haven't tried this technique - its's only a "thought experiment" so far.
Maybe others have already tried it - any opinions?

Steve




------------------------------

End of PHOTO-3D Digest 1206
***************************