P3D Re: Steinheil WA Attachment

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

Corey Levenson wonders why no one has responded to his message
regarding the Steinheil Redufocus wide angle attachment:

>	Are these things really that rare that nobody knows much about
>them? Y'all probably figured that someone else would respond to me but,
>alas, all was silence on the subject. I feel like the kid walking around
>with a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. Was I a dope to buy
>these beautifully crafted optical accessories? They seem to work pretty
>well. Somebody please clue me in...

Were you a dope?  Well... depends. :-) How much did you pay for it?

Seems that the few owners of this rare and expensive accessory do
not want to talk about it!   So, I'll tell you what I know, even
though I don't own (and have no desire to get) one.

They are rare and usually expensive (I know where to get one for
$500, if interested).  They were discussed a year or two ago in
great length in photo-3d.  One common problem is fungus between
the elements that it is almost impossible to clean.  It has been
reported that they work well only for the 2.8 Realist and not
the 3.5 (Allan Carrano has written an article in "Inside 3-D"
regarding this).  

There were also expensive in the 50s (which explains why not many 
were sold): $120 - when a red button viewer was $20, "Realist 
Manual" book $1.50, Film Identifier $1.50, Aluminum masks $1.25/50.

And now a modest opinion:  Beautifully crafted?  So what?  They make 
the Realist bigger and it has to be used upside down... just to offer
a slightly wider field of view.  I never had the desire to get a wider 
field of view from the 35 mm lenses of the Realist.  I remember a guy 
selling one of those in Detroit showed me two pictures of a bridge 
taken from the same spot, one with the attachment and one without.  
The one without was better (better = tighter composition).

Note that the same attachment was made for cameras other than the
Realist, like Kodak, etc.

Some stereo personalities (e.g. Jon Golden) have been seen using 
those... but for me the best thing about owing one is the high resale 
value... :-)

-- George Themelis


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