Re: Expo2, Where Are You?

[P3D Joel Alpers <joel.alpers@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Helms writes:

> Greetings, Solid Ones,

;)
 
> I promised a full report on expo2 back (way back) when I had it. I haven't
> seen much in photo-3d about ye old box of tricks, so I thought I would give
> my input now and ask (1) where is it now, 

Chris, I'm short of time right now, so I'll reply to a couple of your comments
and -hopefully- get back to the rest later (no promises! ;)

Any time anyone wants to find out the expo status, the easiest way is to
check the WEB page:

  http://www.frii.com/~rkymtmem/expo/status.html

This is updated every few days, whenever I get word from someone that the
expo has arrived or shipped out.


> 
> The medium-format images filled up my field of vision (too much so), i.e. the
> magnification of the viewer was great enough (too much so).  But I missed
> substantial portions of  these images.  I "looked around the edges" of the
> viewing lenses, but felt that I was getting a distorted view of things.  Is
> there a better (i.e. "standard") viewer out there for medium format, and is
> m. f. more impressive when seen through a more appropriate viewer?  

The MF (no, it stands for "medium format" ;) viewer in expo was donated for the
duration of the expo by Don Lopp. Don --really-- likes a "full view", and,
IMHO, with his viewer he went a little too close with the focal length of his
lenses, and the field curvature suffered. In my homemade MF viewer, I went
with longer (100mm) lenses, which don't show these problems, but are a little
too "long". My next viewer will have 82mm lenses, almost "ortho".

There is only one MF viewer I know of is the "King Inn" viewer sold by Q-Vu
(Quentin Burke). Though I like many things about it, the lenses are not one
of them; IMHO they suffer some from distortion. Not slamming the viewer, just
my observations.

Several people on this list have built their own MF viewers, and some are
in progress now. Perhaps we could get some discussion going?

Joel


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