P3D VM Personal and Mark II

["Jeff Jessee" <jeffjess@xxxxxxx>]

Jeremy-

I have taken several rolls with both the VM Personal and the
Mark II. Assuming both cameras are in good working order, I
prefer the Personal. The shutter speeds are continuously
variable to 1/100, and the controls are the best of ANY
stereo camera (along with its cousin the TDC Stereo Vivid),
being in view at all times with the helpful dials that you
set for the proper lighting conditions. The Personals are
notorious for "shutter bounce", which causes one side of the
picture to be slightly darker than the rest of the picture,
so you might need to have that fixed. You also need one of
those expensive adapters from DDDalia if you want to use
flash (or if you are handy, you can make one yourself)

The Mark II, does also have some nice features.  Built in M
and X flash sync. A nifty little winding knob which you just
push down once to advance to the next exposure and cock the
shutter. But the exposure system is a little obtuse, using
EV numbers (although they do have pictures of "Mr. Sun" and
clouds peeking thru little windows for exposure settings,
once you realize that the 3 colored checkerboards represent
light, medium, and dark subjects), and I think that's why my
exposures tended to come out better with the Personal. The
design of the Mark II is novel, with the film moving at an
angle, so the left picture goes on the bottom half of the
film and the right picture goes on the top half. (As opposed
to the Personal, where you take pictures on the top half of
the film while you roll it out, then you flip a control and
take pictures on the bottom half as you rewind the film back
into the cartridge.)

One shortcoming of both cameras, they don't have anything to
attach a neck strap to. So you need to get a good case to
make them easy to carry around. I recommend using 24
exposure rolls only (K25 or K64). With 36 exposure rolls,
you get 79 VM pairs, and that's more than I really need.
Also, sometimes there can be a film advance problem,
especially with 36 exposure rolls.

While VM stereo is not the quality of Realist format, it is
very neat to make your own VM reels. And they make great
gifts cause the viewers are cheap.

Jeff Jessee



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