P3D Re: Mounting/Viewing 3D Prints?

[jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Gabriel Jacob)]

There is usually more discussion on the differing methods of mounting
slides, so I thought I would counter balance this with the different
ways of mounting prints! ;-)

Seriously, what brings this up is a "mounting" pile of 3D prints that
required my attention. What kept me from doing most of them, other
than procrastination and time, was deciding which way to mount
them. There were alot of issues to contend with such as time each
method takes, standardizing with what other 3D people are doing,
ease of viewing, cost of different viewing methods, etc...

I liked the traditional 3.5 by 7 inch stereo cards, since this is
an established method for a long time and viewers are readily 
available from cheap $1 plastic lorgnettes to expensive achromatic
viewers. The magnifying quality also is a big plus. What I didn't
like about this type of format is the time it takes to assemble
a stereo print. Even if your fast, it is time consuming. Another
thing I didn't like is the squarish format. Never was a fan of 
this type of aspect ratio, no matter how good the quality of cameras
that came out of the 50's, and before.

Next is the View-Magic type of viewer (also included is the
Free-viewer) which uses mirrors to view stereo-prints. There are
two types, the over/under and side by side viewer. These
have been discussed numerous times on P3D. I had to decide on 
which one would prevail, since they both have advantages and
disadvantages.

I decided on the over/under since it is cheaper to buy and can
one view quite large wide format pictures. The only limitation
being they can only be 4 inch tall. This was not a problem since
I do most of my prints 4x6 inches (8 perf) or 4x10, 4x12 and 4x4
(5perf) cropped from 4x6. The side by side viewer has the advantage
that larger pictures can be viewed but they tend to be much smaller
looking since one would have to be further back to view them.
With the over/under type, you can go quite close to the image being
viewed regardless of the width. For viewing larger (or higher than
4 inches) squarish-format 3D images, the side by side View-Magic
viewer is more suitable. 

Regarding mounting, I just put them in photo album 4x6 sleeves and
presto instant viewing. This is done by others also for viewing 4x4
with lorgnettes but it works equally well with View-Magic viewers
for viewing 4x4 (or 3.5x3.5) as well as 4x6 and longer. So now most
of the prints go in albums with only a few of the better ones also
cropped to fit 3.5x7 stereo cards.

Gabriel


------------------------------