P3D Re: zoom lenses

["Greg Wageman" <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim,

>I'm tempted to say, "Nah, it wasn't humor; I'm just a naturally
sarcastic
>SOB."  But I'd never say that because I haven't learned how to make
smileys on
>my computer yet.  Really, I didn't intend to offend anyone, and I'm
sorry if I
>did.  And if I knew how make smileys, I'd send you a bouquet of them.

I like sarcasm.  I use a lot of it myself in daily life.  A little
sarcastic humor can be a good ice-breaker.  The problem with e-mail
lists is that nobody can see that you're smiling with a wicked gleam in
your eye when you unleash that devilish crack.  So people tend to assume
the worst, and think you're flaming them.  So generally, sarcasm isn't
very useful on these lists.  It can start really big flame-wars that
take days and hundreds of useless messages to die out.  For example, if
I were to send you:

        Smileys for Dummies

1. Press and hold the "shift" key.  While still holding the "shift" key,
press the "9" key.  This produces a "left parenthesis". '('  Release the
"shift" key.

2. Press the "dash" or "hyphen" '-' key, which is just two keys to the
right of the "9" key you just pressed.

3. Press the "semi-colon" ';' key to make a winking smiley; (-; OR
press and hold the "shift" key, and while still holding the "shift" key
press the "semi-colon" ';' key.  Release the shift key.  This produces a
"colon" ':', part of the "standard" smiley. (-:

4. The above steps produces a "right-handed" smiley.  To produce a
"left-handed" smiley, follow step 3 and then 2, then change step 1 to a
"right parenthesis" by pressing shift and the "zero" key.

... you might think that I though you were stupid.  But of course I'd
never do that, because you couldn't see the wicked gleam in my eye.

>simple truth is, I really don't waste a lot of film, and I really do
think
>that the "critical" problems that are sometimes cited as reasons to
strive for
>technical perfection usually aren't that all critical at all.  Sure,
I'd
>rather have perfectly matched lenses, and I'd rather have a
diode-governed
>strobe synch that totally eliminates synch problems, etc. etc.  But I'm
not
>going to let the lack of these goodies stop me from shooting, and --
for the
>most part -- succeeding.  As for the level: I have two cameras with
built-in
>levels -- a Kodak, which is bright, useful, and accurate; and a
Viewmaster,
>which has a fairly dim level showing the bubble way off center when the
>horizon is horizontal.  I figure if you can get your horizons straight
with a
>single SLR, you can do it with a stereo camera -- with or without a
bubble


Different people have different tolerances for the quality of their
results.  There are folks on the list who are unhappy with their twin
rigs matched to within 1/250th of a second.  Others are happy pressing
the separate shutters on a pair of single-use cameras taped together.
If you're happy with the results you get, great!  And if you happen to
get great results from simple gear, even better!  It isn't fair, though,
to shoot down someone offering advice to people who want it.

On the other hand, it's good for the balance for folks to point out that
you don't *have* to have the most
precise/expensive/matched/machined/super-dooper equipment to take good
stereos.  Just do it with a gentle hand and offer some insights from
your own experiences.

    Best regards,
     -Greg W. (gjw@xxxxxxxxxx)



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