P3D Cave Photography options

["Jim Harp" <matmail2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Pflanze wrote:
>My interest is in stereo slides, and I do a lot of cave photography - this
includes formations,
>underground lakes and rivers, and the other very interesting scenes you'll
find in caves. >snip> So >far, all I have is a silver projection screen and
some bids at work on Ebay for cameras. .snip>  Using two >separate
projectors will eliminate the need for special mounting of the realist
format stereo slides, two in the same frame.

Have you considered going with a twinned SLR system?- this would be ideal
for use with twinned projectors IMHO.  As I see it, using two SLRs has the
following advantages: 1. You can vary lense seperation- this can enable you
to get nice depth with subjects that are too far away to work with a Realist
type camera.  (Of course you can always look for some tree branches to put
in front of your subject, but that might pose a problem in a cave) 2. You
get full frame images - no special mounting needed, although you'll probably
need to remount commercially mounted slides to fix alignment and window
issues for projection  3.You can work with modern optics and interchangeable
lenses.  Disadvantages - 1.You can't get the lenses as close together as on
a Realist - not good if you want to shoot a lot of subjects 7 feet away from
you.  2. A bit more fiddling to do, setting  focus and aperture for two
cameras at once. Proponents of single cameras may have other
advantages/disadvantages to offer.  These systems don't have to be expensive
either.  I put my twin Ricoh XR-10M system together for less than $400 and I
wouldn't trade it for any vintage stereo camera.
Jim Harp