Re: Window reversal

[P3D Paul Pascu <pascu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:01 PM 6/23/97 -0500, Greg Wageman wrote:
>Good point!  If they converge, the window is at the plane where the
>normals to the film planes intersect, but converging them introduces
>keystone distortion and isn't recommended, so window@xxxxxxxx would
>be the usual case, at least for educated stereographers. :-)

Does that mean that there's only one right way to take stereo pictures and
if you do it any differently it's simply wrong?  My question is, doesn't
anyone ever do anything different (other than changing the interocular
distance), break the "rules" and make it work for them?  If so, what?  If
not, why not?  I know one reason is to achieve a very realistic image.  I
don't discount that motive.  It's great to be able to give someone the
feeling that they are actually seeing the real thing.  Does anyone ever go
for something completely different?  Why not give someone the feeling of
actually seeing something or being somewhere that doesn't actually exist?
I'm not necessarily talking about anything incredible though it can be.  But
it could be as simple as (off the top of my head) using a single SLR to take
two consecutive images of a landscape that includes a plane in flight but
because of the movement of the plane the result is that it looks like it's a
small plane flying right in front of the observer rather than up in the sky.
It doesn't depict reality but it could look real.

I also understand why there's a desire to have things behind the window.  I
recognize the problem of seeing landscapes or objects unnaturally end in
midair.  Personally this doesn't bother me much more than the fact that my
peripheral vision doesn't extend 360 degrees, especially if the main image
doesn't lie at the egdes.  I know the land extends to the right and left and
the sky continues upward even if I can't see it.  In fact, when I view these
images, I generally don't see the window at all.  I can ignore the mask.  I
know this isn't as easy for some who may find it difficult to ignore objects
around them in the physical room when using a viewer (By the way, Paul, my
advice would be that, since your viewer has it's own light source, turn off
the lights in the room).  But I also saw a couple comments regarding whether
the image is realistic (in a sense, tangible) to the viewer and others
regarding whether the viewers feel like their part of the picture.  I know
these are two different questions.  With a good image you can have the
first.  But how can you have the second when this window is always
seperating you from the image (except under certain situations)?  With
projection in particular, we can't get into the screen with the image but we
can bring the image out to us.

I'm not saying realism should be abandoned, far from it.  I just find it odd
that so many things are labeled as being wrong, something the "educated
stereographers" wouldn't do, instead of being used in some way.  Possibly
people are doing more but I haven't seen anything to that effect, which I am
not.

Paul Pascu


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