P3D You're right Peter

[John Toeppen <toeppen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You're right Peter.
ViewMaster did it for me as a kid too.  I never even saw a Realist until
I lived near Milwaukee in the early '80s.
If properly done the Kodachrome of the time could resolve almost 50
lp/mm over a 13mm height VM frame - an impressive
1300 lines with some granularity.  The Realist fares better at some 2600
lines vertical.  Well, thats more than  25+M of image
at 30 bits deep.
ViewMaster images did carry the torch for 3D for many years.  It was and
is fun, affordable, and educational.
The images were great - but they are way down at the end of a dark
tunnel.  It has been difficult to produce a low cost
large aperture short focal lenght lens for this format.  Then too, your
nose would be to close to the reel, unless you used a
pair (plossel design)of lenses.  A viewer could be modified to provide a
larger apparent image size.  Do people do this?  I would think
that it would be worth doing.
Better yet it would be nice if the old reels could be reissued in JPS
format on a CD.  That way a treasure of old images could be accessed.
While JPS is the same resolution as your monitor (kind of) the field
angle can be 30+ degrees.  Only modest image compression is required
when the images are on CD. Hundreds of reels could fit on a CD.
The Realist format is wonderful.  This is the most practical way to
produce 3D photos with a hand held camera.  Even the Kodaks took
great photos.  It is the best way to record even the finest details in
color and light.  A $150  camera in 1954 was expensive.  The Kodak was
$89.  Few could afford to take their own stereo photos.  And not
everyone could view them at one time.  So, you would have two viewers.
The Realist Projector sold for $550.
Computers are an affordable necessity these days.  Fifty bucks more buys
glasses from VRex.  These are wireless and have not been hard to use.
The mux software is $30 more to do your own images on your PC from your
scanned pairs.

John Toeppen
http://home.pacbell.net/toeppen/





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End of PHOTO-3D Digest 2819
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