P3D "Getting used to it"

["Dr. George A. Themelis" <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eric Goldstein gives an interesting answer to the question of
why we are not bothered by the perspective distortion resulting
from using viewers with longer focal lengths than the cameras:

>Because we are "used to it," because it has become part of
>our visual grammar of what is within the realm of tolerable or even
>"normal." 

Two issues ago, Stereo World published a letter written in 1951 by 
the then Secretary of the Stereoscopic Society American Branch,
Richmond Strong, reply to a letter by Fred Lightfoot.  In this letter
both Lightfoot and Strong, attack the Realist, calling it: "a gadget 
which has gotten onto the hands of a lot of novices..." producing
results which are not worth viewing.

There is one part of the letter that was a puzzle for me:

"As a matter of fact I agree with you that most color slides in any
sizes are usually absolutely distorted in color.  As you say the
colors are garish, and unless the exposure is right on the nose
(and it seldom is of course) the result is something never seen
on Earth before."

I understand the attack to the Realist but here they are attacking
the Kodachrome, one of the color films that has been praised
for its accurate color rendition.

I only understood this passage when I saw my first "autochromes"
(Autochrome is an early color process invented in France and used
in the 1920s and 30s until the Kodachrome came along in the late 
'30s)  The colors in these autochromes are extremely subtle.  If
this was the expectation of color photography at the time, then
I understand how Kodachrome came as a shock!

It is all a matter of getting used to, and having certain
expectations from, say, color photography.  We have the same
problems and discussions today when we compare the Kodachrome
with some of the more saturated E6 films.  Kodachrome users call
the colors from these E6 films "unreal" because they have
certain expectations, shaped by Kodachrome, of what color should
look like in photographs.  Users of the more saturated films
have come to have different expectations from their color
photographs and find that Kodachrome lacks in color saturation.
And, unlike perspective that is well defined, I believe our 
sensing of colors is not that well defined so there is no way 
in my mind to tell which films produce more accurate or pleasing
colors than others.  We are thus left with our own expectations 
as judges.

-- George Themelis


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