No Subject

[Michael Watters <mwatters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I make the case that stereo was not successful, Michael Kersenbrock responds:

>It seems they *were* a success.  It's a matter of tense.  Realists
>were a success, but they aren't one now.  They were NOT dominant within the
>category of "cameras" but perhaps were dominant during the early 

>pre-Kodak-stereo years of the 50's for the category of stereo cameras.

I wasn't speaking of "Realists" but stereo cameras and photography as a whole.  My point was  
that "stereo photography" was not a success.  It's got it's die-hard adherants, but generally  
speaking it failed to gain widespread acceptance.  


>If there were a *single* camera winner, it'd probably have been
>Kodak Instamatics or some such that really hit large volumes (judging
>by thrift stores) -- but I don't think that makes everything else a failure, 

>especially with the "winner" not being made anymore too.

If you view Instamatics as a segment of the category of "automatic" cameras.  They were and  
remain a massive success.  Most of the people buying cameras abandoned the old manual ones  
and picked up automatic cameras in droves.  It's lead to lots of advances for the automatic  
cameras so now their exposure systems are better, their lenses are better, a lot of them are  
actually fairly decent little cameras now.  Even ultra high-end equipment is pulling in some of the  
features of the automatics (autofocusing medium format cameras).  Again, I wasn't speaking of a  
particular model but the entire category.


>Knowing now that DVD (or something else) WILL at some point make VHS machines obsolete, 

>does that mean that VHS machines are  unsuccessful?  Are machines made
>by the tenth largest maker of VHS machines "unsuccessful" even if they're profitable
>to the company making them -- even without being dominant?   I don't think so.

Seeing that VCRs are in something like 95-99% of US homes, I think it's pretty easy to define  
that as a successful product, no matter what replaces it in future.  What ever DOES replace it  
will just be an updated version of the same idea though, "a video recording and playback devise  
for the home".   What sort of penetration level did stereo make at it's height?  Nowhere near that  
level.

>"Stereo photography" will be much more long-term successful than VHS 
>technology.  Absolutely no question about it.  


That's like saying "politics" will be around longer than "Bill Clinton".   Stereo photography is a  
concept, VHS technology is an implimentation.   Again, it seems that you seen to be defining  
something as "successful"  if SOMEBODY somewhere is still doing it.   I disagree with that  
defination.

>Reason being that VHS is only an implementation of the general "video recording/playing"
>category of technology.  Stereo photography is a sub-category of photography, rather
>than being an implementation of photography.  Realist's certainly will kick the bucket 


precisely why your above comparison didn't make any sense.

>completely  at some point, but stereo photography won't.  About the only thing to 
>make stereo  photography go away completely would be something along the lines of 
>successful holography implementations.  I suspect VHS will be long gone before that 
>happens.  Hope I'm wrong and it happens sooner.  :-)

Again, just because somebody somewhere is taking pictures, doesn't mean it's a "success".  I  
personally doubt that even a successful holographic implimntation (whatever youthink that might  
be) would probably be a success.  The reality is most people simply don't give a rat's ass about  
stereo.  Public awareness was pumped pretty well during the 50's, but very few people bought  
into it.   Most everyone were still very happy with their flat cameras.  

In contrast, we can look at stereo vs mono sound in audio recordings.  The recording of stereo  
sound has been VERY successful.  Stereo audio recordings started being made available to the  
public early on, it caught on and quickly dominated the market.  Stereo got added to the video  
signal (so we got stereo TVs and VCRs) and they've met with pretty wide success as well.   

I think a lot can be learned from the comparison of the advent of stereo sound vs stereo imaging.   
They were introduced at roughly the same time during an era when the American population  
was in love with technology and "new stuff".  Both enjoyed some early advancement but while  
stereo sound went on to enjoy general popularity and acceptance, stereo vision languished, fell  
into a nitch then basically died with the exception of the few diehard users.  A few commercial  
ventures have been tried but they've all fallen flat.

>A lot of this depends upon what one means by "success".  Success in becoming a
>major even if not dominant photographic format?  Then probably not.  Success
>in becoming a long lived niche technology?  Then certainly there is a measure
>of success, if even if just Viewmaster and DDDiscover and advertising uses
>are taken into account.  And there's more around than that.

Even a nitch has to be of reasonable size to be considered successful.  The nitch of stereo  
photographers is so small that not a single major camera manufacturer in the last 30 years has  
seen fit to produce a camera.  What cameras HAVE been made in that period?  FED,  
Loreo/Argus and a few lenticulars.  That's pretty limiting.  There are lots of nitch markets around,  
but there's gotta be enough people in the nitch or you'll be abandoned by the manufactures. 

George T quoted the number of cameras manufactured - thanks I couldn't remember the number.    
But it was 300,000 total.  That's Realists, Kodaks and the rest combined.  You could add the 7P  
cameras onto that and it wouldn't inflate the number significantly.  I know that the Argus  
company made a big stink when they sold their 1,000,000th C3 camera.  It was produced at  
roughly the same time as the stereo cameras for far fewer years.  That's over 3 times as many  
C3's as stereo cameras TOTAL and that's just one camera model from one manufactuer.  That's  
just sad and it's not the failure of a particular camera model  but the failure of an entire method.   

>To become a major format, stereo photography has to solve the problems
>you listed -- and this has been discussed at great length within the last
>6 months or so ago (about digital technology opening a gateway to solving

>Stereo photography has been successful and will continue to be at various levels.

The primary problem is one of people caring though.  That's gonna be an issue that's gonna be  
WAY too easy for people on this list to forget.  WE think stereo is great so we tend to make the  
assumption that everyone else should too.  I think that's being very presumptuous.   The reality  
is that most people aren't that interested.  Damn near everyone was introduced to stereo at an  
early age in the form of ViewMasters (the only stereo product which has enjoyed any sort of  
long-term success in the marketplace).  But how many get turned on enough to want to make  
their own?  very very few.  

You can solve all the technical problems with the camera and viewing systems you want to, but  
you can't make people care about it.   I'm sure that everyone on this list has shown their stereo  
photos to all their friends, relatives, a few random people on the street etc etc.  I'm also  
confident that we all probably followed it up with the "you can do this too" speech.  But very few  
people were really impressed enough with the image that they tried doing it on their own.

mike
watters


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