P3D twinning 35mm SLR's

[Mark & Marian Blum <markb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings:

I'm researching options for SLR twinning for wide base (i.e. 4 inches plus) 
stereo work.
Any help from the knowledgable and experienced is welcome. Question # 1:
   Which SLR bodies to use? I 'm told that Minolta 500 and 700 series are 
desireable because they synch
ronize close enough for flash right off the shelf. TRUE?
What other cameras are known to do this, if any. Has anyone succesfully 
synchronized any of the new generation Nikon or Ricoh SLRs? If so, what was 
your experience?

Thanks for 
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 98 15:40:10 -0800
From: Michael Watters <mwatters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: photo-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: P3D Realist system successful?  HA!
Message-ID: <9802162340.AA01632@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>Several folks point to the camera's "success".

Oh get real folks.   Stereo cameras in general (and certainly not the Realist) can NOT be  
described as successful by any stretch of the imagination.  The ONLY time that stereo imaging  
enjoyed any sort of general popularity was at the beginning of photography (I'm talking  
view-cards here).  People could see parts of the world they never had before just like they were  
there (with camera/viewers that weren't exactly ortho BTW).  That success got killed off by the  
rise of movies and it's never made any kind of real comeback.  There was a roughly 20 year  
period where passibly-decent cameras and viewers were manufactured, but the manufacture  
and sale of flat cameras DWARFED that of stereo cameras.   Just because there's some people  
who were turned onto stereo at some point and still use the old things doesn't make them a  
success.  Same's true of Beta VCRs, reel-to-reel tape decks and 8-tracks.

What's behind this failure?  I don't think any of this can be blamed on the Realist.  This is the  
failure of an entire way of doing things.   An entire format.  The vast majority of people just didn't  
care about stereo photos.   They didn't see an obvious advantage over the photos they were  
used to seeing at that time.  Compound that with added problems of special viewing  
requirements (glasses/viewers), cameras with serious limitations (fixed lenses, restrictions on  
subject location, the extra layer of rules for making a decent stereo photo over a decent flat  
photo) and it just never took off.

If you're gonna say the Realist was a success because stereo-folks still use them, what ya  
gonna compare it to?  You can't compare it to the Kodak (or any other American format camera  
since they are all basically the same.  Just a few mechanical differences, basic design and  
optics are all the same - 35mm taking lenses, 65-70mm spacing, long viewing lenses).   
Practically speaking, there weren't any options.  Folks who wanted to do stereo either shot  
THAT or they built their own equipment.  That's still true.  The cameras themselves have aged,  
and they haven't aged well.  The ONLY thing that keeps them in use is that a decent more  
modern stereo camera has never been built.  The best one in the last 30 years was the FED and  
it was over-priced and based on 1960's camera designs.  Even at that, if the damned thing had  
been built with a manual exposure system it probably would have dominated the stereo  
community.  The stereo cameras that most people use are 50-year old designs that weren't even  
cutting edge technology in their day.  Much better lenses and shutters were around, but they  
didn't go into the stereo cameras.  It would have been trivial for a camera company to produce a  
product that was much better than the Realist but they didn't.   


Regarding the ortho-fit that started the discussion - I personally don't think it's a big deal.  I don't  
take pictures (flat or 3D) with the intention to recreate reality, so I don't view that as a big priority.   
The camera/viewer lenses on the various Realist format cameras were chosen for very practical  
reasons that had nothing to do with ortho-ness.  I kinda like the Realist viewers myself.  They're  
handy and easy enough to modify for wide-views.  Can't stand their cameras though.  Hideous  
things that look like they hand-milled the prototype and didn't bother changing the design after  
that.  I haven't used a 50's stereo camera in at least 5 years.  I shoot either with a twin SLR rig, a  
FED, Twinned Olympus XA-2's or a siamese-twin Argus C3  (depends on what I'm shooting).

mike
watters


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