P3D Back from SIGGRAPH 98

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

After not going since 1994 (the last time it was in Orlando), my wife
and I just got back from Orlando and SIGGRAPH 98.  It was her first
SIGGRAPH.  The conference center (which was still under construction
in 1994) is about double the size it was the first time I was there.
As always SIGGRAPH was great, although there were some unexpected
changes (no lunches with the courses and the 25th Anniversary party
was incredibly lame).  Besides the usual head mounted displays and
shutter glasses there weren't many stereoscopic products on the
exhibit floor that stood out (i.e., that I remember).  There was a
company doing large polarized prints, and I'll probably wind up
sending them one of my honeymoon or wedding pairs to print.  Sony had
a stereoscopic video system (using five video cameras and a hardware
processing box), but its main use is to allow the mixing of live video
with computer generated graphics.  I don't think you could get pairs
out of the system (the video was fed directly to the processor).
There was at least one company claiming to be able to convert a single
photo to a 3D computer model.  I have flyers, but haven't bothered to
read them yet.

Since we figured on taking some time off from the conference for
sightseeing, I brought along my twin Lubitels and a Yashica-Mat 124G
with a cheap flash bracket and a Pentax AF280-T flash.  This was
probably too much equipment to drag around, and as I later found out,
too many new things to try out on a vacation.

We went to the Disney/Magic Kingdom on Sunday, took a day off on
Thursday to go to the Disney/MGM Studios and went to the Kennedy Space
Center Visitors Complex on Saturday.

Unfortunately after shooting about 2-1/2 rolls my Olympus twin cable
release broke.  When I took it out of my camera bag I noticed that the
pin on the longer cable (the adjustable one) was sticking out of the
cable even thought the plunger wasn't being pressed.  After fiddling
with the adjustment screw at the end of the cable I was able to get to
the point where the pin was retracted when the adjustment screw was
all the way out.  However in this position the cable wouldn't reliably
stay attached to the camera.  Does anyone know how to repair this
cable release?

My wife (who had the window seat on the airplane) tried taking some
stereos of the cloud formations with the Yashica-Mat.  I haven't tried
viewing or mounting them yet.  She also took some clouds and rainbow
pairs with the Lubitels at the convention center.

For the most part I used the Sunny-16 rule for exposure (I don't trust
the Yashica-Mat's meter), and the outdoor exposures turned out pretty
good (occasionally slightly dark).  A few times I metered with my
Pentax spot meter and a small grey card.  For indoor (mostly the
Saturn V Center at KSC) and heavy shade I used the flash on manual by
setting the shutter to 1/125 second (a leaf shutter will sync at any
speed, but I was using 1/125 second for the outdoor Sunny-16 pictures
and figured it would be better not to change it), and setting the
aperture to 28/main subject distance in meters.  The quality of the
flash pictures varied pretty widely.  Some pictures that I thought
wouldn't come out did (the flash shouldn't have been powerful enough
to reach that far, but given the opportunity I took the picture
anyway), and others that should have been fine were too dark (many
were almost black).  I know that part of the problem is that the
controls on the camera can be changed too easily (especially the film
speed and the aperture) by rubbing against the camera (e.g., when
changing film, or as the camera swings against you on the strap).  I
discovered this happening a couple of times and reshot some of the
effected photos.  However I know I did check the settings on many of
the pictures that did not come out, especially at the Saturn V Center.

Can anyone recommend a good book on flash photography?  The books I've
seen all seem to assume that you are using the latest electronic
wonder camera with a matching system flash.

This was a great vacation, but a disaster photographically.  Perhaps
this is to balance out the really easy introduction to medium format
stereophotography I had last year in Ireland.

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Humans explore the Universe with five
reynolds@xxxxxxxxx              |   senses and call the adventure science."
http://www.panix.com/~reynolds/ | - Edwin P. Hubble


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