P3D re: blurry V-M images

[Michael Kaplan <view@xxxxxxxx>]

>Didn't the photographers who took these pictures know how to
focus a camera?

There may be someone on the list more familiar than me with the V-M
production equipment who can offer a more detailed answer to this
interesting question. Here are my thoughts:

I would assume that most of the original transparencies were perfectly
sharp, although less-than-sharp originals may have been used on
occasion.

Most of the reels in question were duplicated from second-generation
transparencies using a special duplicating camera and 16 mm Kodachrome
movie film. Assuming the masters were sharp (which may *not* have always
been the case), the duplicating cameras, of which there are at least
four, need to be periodically adjusted for sharp focus.

This was not always done, and the sharpness of the final V-M-format
image might vary from batch to batch, each time the reel is re-run.

Unfortunately, as View*Productions has discovered, the problem still
exists. We have made Fisher-Price aware of the fact that the duplicating
cameras need to be periodically checked and adjusted for optimum
sharpness.

Michael Kaplan
View*Productions
Publishers of "Fallingwater: Wright and the 3rd Dimension"
view@xxxxxxxx


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