P3D Re: The TDC Stereo Vivid

[Bruce Springsteen <bsspringsteen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Oliver Dean posted good information and fair praise for the Stereo Vivid. 
Let me briefly perpetuate my role as his nemesis from the dark side and
report some of my misgivings:

- The Vivid, like its cousin the VM Personal, is designed to relieve
learning about exposure rules by providing an on-board mechanical
calculator, linked to the controls ("Expo-SURE").  We know what I think of
that. ;-)

- In its effort to indicate everything, it is mechanically complex and
prone to petty malfunction.  Mine has a broken rangefinder, a useless
bubble level, little moving red depth of field indicators on the focus
wheel that are either out of adjustment or inherently off-base, and there
is no one who will confidently name for me a repair person who can make
these beasts work right.  On the contrary, I have heard repeated stories
of this kind of camera being "repaired" into worse trouble than it had in
the first place.  The metal around the lenses is prone to nasty corrosion.
 And getting an adaptor to use modern flash is particularly expensive.  It
appears that they are prone to an image-ruining internal reflection.  It
is time-consuming to load.

Having said all that, I confess I love the chromey, knobby little thing. 
It attracts attention from passersby, who assume you are a maven, to carry
such a jewel.  It has continuous adjustment of not only the aperture, but
the shutter speed, by wheels on the top where they belong.  Find *that* in
any other 50s stereo camera.  It is lightweight.  The shutter button in
front, pressed towards the photographer, avoids shake in the up-down
direction.  (Susan Pinsky pointed this out to me.)  It has a smaller than
usual "average human" stereobase of 65mm, for whatever that's worth.  But
most importantly, it is fast, and my 5P camera of choice when out on a
multi-roll, fast changing light and subject scene.  And I admit the dials
of the computer can actually help you to see the relationship between
shutter, aperture, prevailing light, and subject brightness, if you pay
attention.

Bruce

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