P3D Re: Barriers to Stereoscopic Photography

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 12:33:04 -0700
>From: Bob_Maxey@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: P3D Barriers to Stereoscopic Photography

There have been several good replies to Bob's post, but I think it's
worthwhile to make a few additional points, since this is such a strong
statement on contemporary culture, and since I believe it relates to the
future of 3D:

>I will throw this idea out. Could it possible be that in this day and age,
>people have lost the 'do it yourself' attitude? At one time, people were
>more handy around the house, 

There seem to be vastly more building supply stores in the US than ever
before, and huge numbers of home repair and construction books available to
homeowners. I'd guess the average homeowner is at least as handy as in the
past.

>worked on their own cars, 

My opinion is that modern cars are harder for the individual to work on,
but generally work better and need less frequent repair than cars in the
past. It's a function of the evolution of technology and mass production.

>pumped their own gas, 

I hardly ever see anybody get full service when self service is available
at a lower price. (Except maybe in very bad weather.)

>got up off their behind and actually changed the dial on the TV,

Not if they had a working remote control, they didn't. But TV remotes were
very expensive. Nowadays it's cheaper to bundle a remote with the TV than
it used to be to put those CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK dials on the TV.

>...I really hate to use the word Lazy, but could that be part of it? I would
>guess that if we had this list 20 years ago, 

But this list wouldn't exist 20 years ago - those hardworking pioneers would
never dream of sitting at home and typing an email - they'd go visit the
person they wanted to communicate with, and talk with them face to face. :-)
And they'd wait till it snowed so they could walk there barefoot. :-) :-)

>we would find that no one on
>it would trust their slides to another person to mount them.

If Kodak had not yet started to offer Realist mounting by 1979 (20 years
ago), then they put it off until awfully late. I had the impression (please
correct me if it's wrong) that during the days of the big Realist boom,
*most* of the photos taken were mounted commercially. If most of those who
still use Realists now mount their own slides, perhaps it's that the ones
who are left mainly represent the artistic perfectionists, rather than what
was the mainstream of Realist photographers back then. But even most of us
on this list don't insist on doing all our own chemical processing.

I recently got an ad in the mail for some kind of nostalgia magazine - the
whole thing is supposed to be full of heartwarming and inspirational stories
of thrift in the good old days, e.g. "Mother used to spend months making
clothes for us kids out of old orange crates", and "all the yarn was going
into the war effort, so instead of knitting stocking caps, we used to tie
cats to our heads at night" (I didn't read the ad very carefully, so those
specific examples may not have been in there).

I think there are two important points regarding the "do-it-yourself"
philosophy with respect to society:

1) At some point in time there seems to have been strong promotion of
an "ethical principle" that doing things yourself is a moral virtue,
regardless of how much practical sense it might make. There still seems
to be some tendency to promote this viewpoint.

2) Doing something yourself can make practical sense if it meets one of
several criteria: a) you need it done, and there's no other way to get it
done to your satisfaction, b) there's a considerable benefit to doing it
yourself, for example in money or time saved, or more satisfactory result,
or c) you derive personal satisfaction from the act of doing it yourself.
People nowadays have much higher potential for accomplishment than people
in the past, and many people seem to be very ambitious in what they seek
to undertake. If having somebody else (or some machine) do something for
you increases the total of what you can accomplish, then it's well worth
considering that option.

For myself, I like taking 3D photographs, and I like viewing them, but I
really don't particularly enjoy the task of mounting them, and the time
it takes to mount them places a major constraint on the number of 3D
photographs I have time to produce. If I were good at mounting slides, but
if a commercial service could do at least as good a job at a reasonable
price, then I expect I would do a lot of business with that commercial
service. I suspect many current and potential 3D photographers would have
a similar viewpoint. Supposing, for example, that the average person likes
3D twice as much as 2D, but taking 3D photos is 20 times as much work for them
as 2D snapshots, there's not going to be much active interest. I would like 
to see 3D photography become much more common, both because I think it would 
enrich human life, and because a mass market could increase quality and 
innovation, and lower prices.

John R


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