P3D Beamsplitter success

[SHIELDS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi!

It is hard to believe I started in stereo photography less than a year ago!

After carefully considering what was available, I chose a beamsplitter
setup. While I have taken a lot of pictures with manual cameras--even
stills with movie cameras (I used to be into really small format stuff
and my main camera for a long time was a Minolta 16II), by now my life
is moving too fast to do witnout exposure automation. That means a
beamsplitter on an auto SLR, a Nimslo, or a FED (unless you want to
go to the weight and/or expense of a twin rig or an RBT). I always keep
an eye on what I am doing and just finished an extensive search of the
archives regarding Nimslo and FED cameras.

At the same time, I finished my viewer illuminator, described in another
post. Since school is out, I finally had time to mount the rest of the
slides from my biggest stereo shooting campaign. (Getting slides back
mounted in standard 2X2 mounts at no extra expense/trouble is one attraction
of a beamsplitter, but I find that Kodak mounts them a trifle off to
one side.)

I'm finally past the point where I want to keep slides in the "to show"
box just because I'm fascinated with their being stereo. I've always been
a very critical shooter with "flat" slides, and the same is true now.
At this point I have about 25 very good slides and I'm very pleased with
them. They include outdoor shots, night scenes, and indoor shots under
ordinary incandescent illumination, using an 80C filter. This is a
demanding setup, requiring a tripod, but the results can be very
satisfying.

I read recently, on the Kodachrome mailing list, IIRC, that stereo
shooters tend to use Kodachrome 200 more frequently if they are
projecting the slides rather than viewing them with a viewer. Now
that I have the super-bright illuminator, I see more why this is
so, although in general I like the 200 very much--not only is it
fast, but it does quite well under fluorescent illumination without
a filter. I am about to shoot a test roll of 64. I used to use it
all the time before the 200 came out. I shot it with an 81A filter
as I felt it was too cool otherwise.

One criticism of the beamsplitter system is the vertical format. I did
have a half-frame SLR for quite a while (Olympus Pen FT) and found that
two thirds of all the slides I took with it were vertical--admittedly,
it was easier to hold the camera that way, but I could have, and did
turn it sideways for a horizontal shot if I wanted to. While I would
choose a square format, all else being equal (and loved my Kodak
Instamatic Reflex for this reason), the fact is that there are plenty
of things in life that fit well into a vertical format, including shots
of railroad tracks going off into the distance (fantastic in stereo!)--
I'm a railfan and I take a lot of shots of trains.

Another criticism of the beamsplitter system is the limited range of
apertures, although with Kodachrome 200, f/5.6 and f/8 are pretty useful.
I'll see how it goes with the Kodachrome 64. As I explore what I can
do with my Pentax and Stereo-tach beamsplitters, I am suspecting that
the Pentax will allow me to use f/4 and maybe even f/2.8, while the
Stereo-tach, with its finely beveled inner mirrors, may allow f/11
or even f/16. 200-speed film does need a smaller aperture in bright
sunlight, but I hardly ever shoot in bright sunlight. At first I was
put off with the black edges, but the viewer aperture effectively
gets rid of them, at least with the Pentax. I'll see as I work more
with the Stereo-tach. It is definitely annoying on prints, but I shoot
mostly slides. It was a revelation to look at those 25 slides with
the bright viewer, and see no black bands--beautiful! What I keep hearing
from various sources, and confirmed by my experiments with an Olympus
40mm f/2 as compared to the 50mm f/1.8, is that beamsplitter success
is highly dependent on finding a lens that goes well with the beamsplitter.
I seem to have hit on a good combination with the 50mm f/1.8.

To be sure, an SLR (mine is an Olympus OM-10) with a beamsplitter is
on the unwieldy side, but I can manage. I certainly discovered
drawbacks as I was considering the FED and the Nimslo the other night,
and manual exposure has another set of charms!  :-)   The bottom line
is that stereo photography just plain requires extra effort to
get its extra special results!

One thing I love about the beamsplitter format is ease of mounting,
even though I decided to do it myself, and developing some sophistication
in mounting techniques was a deciding factor in putting together the
nice set of slides. I just can't quite swallow the increased time it
would take for Realist-format slides. It's not that I can't do it--
I've mounted "everything" before, including 16mm movie frames in
modified Minox mounts, but I just don't have as much time as I used to!

A last word is macro shots. I get the picture that the Nimslo can excel
at this, especially with the Teco-Nimslo modification, but I did come
up with an old focusing rail that does the job for me, shifting the
camera sideways, without the beamsplitter. It's a bother, but it would also
be a bother to acquire a Nimslo, and I still wouldn't really be able to 
focus, and would have to work at the specified distance with each closeup
attachment. I've learned to cut the film chips and mount them side-by-side
in a standard 2X2 mount. That _is_ time-consuming, but I don't take that
many macro shots, and it has to be balanced against the time and expense
of another, different camera system (Nimslo) to do the same thing.

Stereo photography forever!

Mark Shields

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shields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netcom.com/~northws1/stmatt.htm
"Let the little children come to Me," Jesus said, "and don't keep
 them away. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
  -Matthew 19:14



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