My cloud story...

[P3D Dr. George A. Themelis <fj834@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was taking pictures of the sunset by the seashore in Greece with my 7p
Realist on a tripod, inside the water.  

Unfortunately, most pictures were damaged because one shutter was stuck
open and I did not know it!  (At the same time, I was taking pictures of
the setup with my 5p Realist that had the overlap problem - which I also
was not aware of - darn it!!!)

When the 7p roll came back, all pictures of the sunset were damaged (light
leaking from the open shutter washed them out), except for two frames from
different pairs, next to each other.  I was bracketing exposures (yes, I do
that, but rarely! :-)) so there was a difference in density too.

Since this was the only two pictures of the sunset (but not part of a same
stereo pair) I freeviewed them by habit, still unmounted in the roll.  To
my surprise, I detected some depth.  I mounted the pictures and took a
better look through the viewer.

Holy smokes!  A wonderful hyperstereo of clouds by the sunset!

Here is what had happened:  While I took some time to change the f-stop and
advance the camera, the clouds must have moved and their displacement must
have been inversely proportional to their distance (due to constant
velocity?), creating a very interesting hyperstereo.  Imagine, clouds in
hyperstereo from the ground and, behind, the setting orange sun!

I have to thank the Realist problem for this image, or I would have never
known about it!!!

Now, most of the picture is water which is flat and the reflections from
the sunset do not match.  So the picture will need to be copied, to enlarge
the clouds, crop most of the water and adjust composition and density.  A
bit of work but well worth it, IMO!  I'll try it with the first roll of
slide duplicating film that goes through my camera.

If I knew that I was recording hyperstereos from a single camera position,
I would have tried more pictures (with an SLR), aiming just at the clouds. 
That's something to have in mind next time!  If the camera is stationery then
it does not matter which way the clouds move.  But, to make things even more
interesting, the camera can be moved in the SAME direction with the clouds,
to give depth to the foreground too (assuming that it does not move - water
is not a good choice).  

George Themelis


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