P3D Re: Mounting Errors (OSPS)

[fj834@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Dr. George A. Themelis)]

Thanks Karen for the good words!  I'd like to mention that Karen and
Mark drive all the way from Pittsburgh to attend our monthly meetings.
They made T-shirts for our club (w/club logo) and offered a donation
for every T-shirt sold.  Mark has shown very creative stereo work and
we are all looking forward to seeing their pictures (both Mark's AND
KAREN's) next year.  Mark and Karen are into 3d for less than a year!

Regarding mounting errors and judging, Karen wrote:

>Mark and I noticed that some slides in
>Billy's presentation and even in this month's competition had some
>ghosting or mounting errors that Billy seemed to overlook in judging????
>One example we thought was the "KERMIT IN MANHATTAN" slide.  (We just
>thought mounting correctly was an important aspect of stereo...is it
>not?) Yes, the slide did have a lot of depth and color, but it seemed a
>little difficult to view? I don't know? Maybe it was just us?  

A couple of comments:

1. Ghosting: I do not consider it a pure mounting error.  It is more
   of a projection artifact that can be made better with some mounting
   adjustments.  Those who only use a viewer cannot see it (but with
   some experience they can predict it.)  The adjustment to reduce
   ghosting is to bring the areas with the highlights closer to each
   other.  Of course, if the bright object is at infinity (like in the
   case of a sunset), matching the highlights on the screen means 
   putting the infinity right on the screen which totally messes up
   your stereo window...

2. There are mounting errors and MOUNTING ERRORS!  The "Kermit" slide
   was a close-up that was mounted in a normal (heat-seal cardboard
   mount).  As a result, the stereo window was off, resulting in
   "floating edges".  This can be fixed by pulling the chips away
   from each other and going to a close-up mount if running out of
   space.  What I consider a MOUNTING ERROR is vertical misalignment.
   
How does a judge react when faced with a rather harmless error like
this?  (I say harmless because it really does not hurt the eyes, only
makes the picture project not as good as it could have been.)

Some judges ignore it.  Other might not even be able to see it.  I can
see it and it bothers me.  And as a judge I will hesitate to give a
higher score for a good slide that has such mounting "problems".
Apparently, Billy Turner either cannot see the "problems" or they
do not bother him.  I am inclined to say that he cannot see them
very well because he mentioned that he has a problem with one eye
and also some of his slides had slight problems (one example was
the one grape vs. two grapes pair I mentioned earlier - the two
grapes were mounted OK, the one grape was not.)

To close the story let me say that the person with the "Kermit" side
is a beginner who has his slides mounted and who has not developed
a good sense of what the stereo window is and how it controlled.

Maybe next year we can plan a workshop and focus on the stereo
window (we did have a workshop this year on mounting in general)

MAYBE MARK CAN TEACH THE WORKSHOP!!! :-)

Regards - George Themelis, OSPS


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