Re: New 3D business opportunity

[P3D Larry Berlin <lberlin@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 
>From: P3D Gregory J. Wageman writes:
>
>
>Adam Beckerman had this flash of inspiriation:
>................
>>Imagine spending $500 (about the same 
>>if not less than many of you have spent on a stereo camera) 
>>and never having to spend another penny on mounting 
>>supplies, projection equipment, no lost hours spent preparing 
>>the slides or prints for viewing, no worries about film not 
>>advancing, lost pictures, double exposed pictures, and 
>>again, the list goes on...
>............................................................
>
>The digital photographer still has to preview and edit, set the
>window, and probably crop and/or retouch.  I'm willing to bet that,
>given the essentially "free" medium of digital photography, digital
>stereographers will typically spend even MORE time at the computer
>fixing up images that a conventional photographer would have spent
>greater time composing and framing to reduce film waste, than the
>conventional stereographer currently spends mounting.  The digital
>stereographer will feel freer to just "take the shot" (and take more
>of them) since there's no virtually no waste, knowing he or she can
>"fix it in the mix", to borrow an audio production metaphor.  In other
>words, the time spent mounting will be replaced with time spent doing
>other digital manipulations, so I don't see a win there, timewise.

*******  As the saying goes GIGO. If a digital photographer wants good
images he/she needs to take care with the taking as well as the editing.
Digital, once it gets to a better overall quality/resolution level, has the
advantage over film in that you CAN crop, adjust the window, composite
multiple images, add titles, rescale an image, fix occasional problems
(believe me one doesn't want to fix problems very often!), or go hog-wild
with special color effects in an instant and generally have much greater
freedom of expression than is remotely possible with a slide image alone.
Time factors become immaterial to these advantage features. With slides,
after you spend your time mounting, all you have is a slide image. You can't
change it, crop or resize it. Compositing can only be done by mounting two
chips, or by double exposures, either of which require more care and
planning than is necessary with a digital image. Special color effects
require further special planning and all sorts of tricky things. Once you
play with digital images slides feel very constricting by comparison.

>
>Th digital stereographer will still have to store his images somewhere;
>while reliable storage media isn't expensive, it still isn't free.  And
>digital images with resolutions rivaling film's will not be small, even
>assuming the use of as-yet-undiscovered forms of compression.

******  They have some very small Gigabyte sized storage media around that
would store a *lot* of images conveniently... Compared to several large
rectangular plastic cases for a smaller number of slides. I think digital
has an advantage already in the storage department judging solely on media
size. Of course one needs a computer to read the media....

>
>The main drawback I see with digital (disregarding resolution, which
>will become sufficient eventually) is, "How do I take my images to any
>arbitrary place to show to people"? ............

Ever hear of color printers? Or digital to film transfers? Digital is the
best of both worlds if the input resolution can be improved, which is
obviously happening. Resolution is the only current significant drawback to
digital stereo.

Larry Berlin

Email: lberlin@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.sonic.net/~lberlin/
http://3dzine.simplenet.com/


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