3Discover Viewer

[P3D <shab@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The 3Discover Viewer

I was curious enough about the 3Discover to order one. Here are my impressions.

The viewer is nicely and ergonomically designed with some clever features.
It comes with 2 cartridges. Great America and The Grand Canyon. When you
look into the eyepieces you see a full frame stereo picture. It is not
panoramic.

It is made of two-color plastic and weighs about 6 oz. with batteries only,
and about 9 oz. with a cartridge. Its approximate dimensions are 3" x 7" x
2.5" . Since the viewer is made of injected plastic I rounded off my
measurements and made some assumptions of the nominal dimensions.

It has 2 single-element plano-convex plastic lenses. The brochure says
these are aspheric. Diameter is 18 mm  with a focal length of 43 mm,  which
I believe is the normal for full frame film. Focus is fixed. The two frame
openings are 23 mm x 35 mm with a 22 mm bridge in between. The separation
on the film frames therefore is 57 mm. The eyepieces  are adjustable in 3
click positions at 55, 60 and 65 mm.

It has a motor drive that transports the film and uses two AA  batteries.
You do that by pressing on one of two buttons on top of the viewer and are
able to go either forward of backwards. I opened the viewer to see the guts
(of course) and discovered a small printed circuit and a chip which
contains the circuitry. Rather than counting sprocket holes, as I thought
it would do, every 57 mm or so, there is a black mark in between sprocket
holes. This stops a reflection from an LED into an adjacent photo receptor.
It doesn't know when the film has reached the last frame, so the motor
continues to spin, but I assume that a slip clutch protects the film, from
people like me, to be ripped off, although the leaflet tells you not to do
that.

The cartridge carries the film and has its own light diffuser on the back.
The viewer has no internal illumination. Each cartridge has 12 stereo
pairs, indexed with a number on the left side. A list of the views with
corresponding numbers is printed on the cartridge for identification.

The brochure lists 12 cartridges on one place and gives the impression that
many more are available at another. It provides an address in Montreal for
further inquires for more cartridges.

While I hope the above is an objective description of the viewer, here is
my subjective evaluation of it. The viewer looks cheap and doesn't look
very durable. The motor seems to overwork at times and you need to push the
buttons in an opposite direction to free an occasional freeze. This seems
to solve the problem. The eyepieces don't have enough relief for
eyeglasses. One of the two cartridges didn't fit well and needed some
prodding. (I am good at that...) But my main disappointment was the quality
of the images. The images are mostly hyper stereo. They are very, very,
contrasty and many are not in focus. The above is more than likely a
problem in duplication, but one would have to see an original film for
final judgment.

Obviously the company is planning to make money by selling the cartridges
rather than the viewers. In my opinion they need to upgrade significantly
the quality of the images. Otherwise there will be another 3-D product on
the market that gives our field of interest a bad name, and that is too
bad.

Having said all that, you should judge for yourself. I bought my viewer via
the  Lifestyle Catalog. It sells for $49.95 plus shipping of $6.95 for a
total of 56.90. However if you call them and request a catalog, they will
send you a $10 discount coupon, reducing the price to $46.90 with shipping,
in the USA.

Lifestyle:  1935 Swarthmore Ave., CN # 3023, Lakewood, NJ 08701-4541 USA

Credit card orders: 1-800-669-0987 General orders: 1-908-364-4448


Shab Levy
Portland, Oregon, USA
shab@xxxxxxxxxxxx



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