P3D Re: Cheap slide scanner - poor quality, but hey...

[michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Kersenbrock)]

> This is only cheap if you've already got a digital camera, but it's 
> possible to take shots of Realist slides through a radex viewer. I can't 
> imagine you'd be able to cobble together an acceptable digital stereo 
> pair with this method, but it's fun anyhow for a quick thrill.

No fair!  I was going to "announce" this "revolutionary" method of 
"slide scanning" as soon as I got mine "mounted" and put on my web 
site, but I've been playing with upgrading my home computer lately.  :-)
I'm sure I could have made millions of dollars selling this new
emanon technology (or has that trademark already been taken?). :-)

Seriously though, my experiment used my Airequipt Stereo theatre which
I had recently upgraded the lenses with two cheap achromats on each
side (much better than pre-modification, but still not perfect).  I
intend also to try an assortment of viewers to see which worked better
(or less bad as the case might be).

Similar to Dana, I had used my cheap'o-matic Fuji DS-7 digital
camera (640x480) with the lens up flush with each viewer lens (in
macro-mode focus I recall).  Worked much better than I might have
expected (disregarding camera's photo quality).  It has a "real-time"
miniature video display so one can see what's going on before hitting
the picture snapping button.

For the purpose of making non-crosseyed freeviewable web images,
where the resolution has to be pretty low anyway (my justification
for this camera to begin with), it might not be as bad as one 
might think (TBD).

Anyway, I'll announce when I've got them on my web site (soon
hopefully).

Boy, and I bet many thought NSA '98 was exciting, aren't you glad 
you're back where the REAL excitement is?  No?  Oh well, I
wish I had gone to NSA '98 too.... sob.. sigh....

I loved the reports and show-pictures.  Keep the pictures
coming!

Mike K.


P.S. - The Fuji camera has the lens apparatus protruding from 
       the front in such a way that it "fits" the viewer eyepiece 
       area nicely.


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