P3D Stereo Portraits and Dead Stereo Marketplace

[Bob_Maxey@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

>>Other "perfect" applications surely exist in the popular realm.  Family
>>portraits come to mind...  The question nagging us is this: why has
stereo
>>not caught on in these areas?  Are the technical hurdles still too high
to
>>effectively present 3-d to the masses?


WHY THERE ARE PROBLEMS WITH STEREO:

Lack of broad support for the stereo format. Products like mass lenticulars
do not help either. They are too expensive and very inconvenient to get
printed. The quality is also inconsistent and terrible when compared with
stereo slides. Stereo photographers who use it, will put up with these
issues, not the general public. Stereo for the public is a never to be
taken seriously, novelty item they will never buy.

I think the technical end is easy to deal with. Products like RBT are not
the answer because they are too expensive, and certainly not a mass
consumer product. Used stereo cameras are also not what the public - the
general public will buy, regardless of how great they are. Ask someone to
shell out thousands of dollars for a camera and they are inclined to tell
you to forget it.

I would have bought the RBT Macro attachment, but it is far too expensive
for what you get. There were a few things I did not like about it -
especially since I do not have an RBT to use the attachment. I am not
saying it is a bad camera, just a very costly way to do what I can more
easily accomplish with my old style methods. I do not choose to wait for
who knows how long, and spend thousands of dollars. Again, I am not
slamming RBT. It's just not for me.

By the time you factor in no easy way to get stereo mounted - from the
average person's point of view that is, they are left with doing it
themselves. And there are probably no sources of stereo mounts at the local
"Dealer" so one is left with ordering mounts. If they use Kodak, it takes a
long time to get them back. By the general public's measurement, even a
week is way too long to wait. The average photographer wants prints now,
quality is less important, and they do not want to have to View them in a
Viewer.

Viewmaster is no good, either. These days, all there seems to be available
are crappy cartoon junk, stereo made by posing cardboard cutouts against a
scene, crappy exposures, too bloody much grain and just bad to far worse
stereo. Not like the days when Viewmaster spoke to the masses in a
different voice, and the quality was high. Now, no one thinks about VM
because it is usually relegated to toy stores. I miss the old days when VM
was great and wonderful to look at. Now, well... enough about that.

3Discover? Great stuff, but no one carries it and there are no chances that
the average person will find them. A perfect chance by 3Discover and VM to
help push stereo out to the front where it should be.

One bright spot is the introduction of color vectographs now called
Stereo-Jet, and other names. It gives people the opportunity to have prints
in 3D, with very little effort. However, there is only a few commercial
producers so far, it takes lots of time to make them, stiff preparation
requirements and expensive. This will kill the process for most in the
general audience, but perhaps might lead to popularizing stereo more. This
then will help stereo rise again to a point. and that will help make stereo
portraits more popular - or at least somewhat popular. At least this is one
possibility.

Even in the best of times, when stereo mounting materials were readily
available from a photo dealer - when we actually had good photographic
dealers, stereo photographers by and large still used Kodak and got then
back rapidly.

Stereo has its ebbs and tides and for some reason, it is simply not popular
with the masses. Compared to other types of photography, stereo was simply
not important to the general public. We showed stereo slides to probably
thousands of customers, and we had a great display of stereo cameras, but
only one out of 500 actually asked about how stereo was made, and 10
percent of those bought a camera. I doubt most of them shot more than one
roll of stereo.

Selling to the masses is the only way manufacturers will make a simple,
high quality, easy to use stereo camera, and only if Kodak and others
support it. No one will manufacturer a stereo camera if there is not going
to be support from the large manufacturers of films. If the RBT Stereo
camera was $300.00, they would sell to more people, but only a tiny
fraction of the general public would buy them at that price.

The above, are a few of the reasons I have to explain why stereo is dead as
far as mass markets go. If it were more cost effective and easier, Stereo
images of all types - including portraits would catch on. The public has to
be educated, though, and that is a difficult thing to do. In stereo's prime
time, it was simply not as popular as other formats and I could never
figure out why. After all, we had a slew of cameras available, stereo
processing was readily available, and dealers could support the customer.
Even then, it was not popular.

This list, is a small way also might contributes to killing off the joy and
potential widespread appeal of stereo. After the recent discussion about
how to figure separation, with this formula and that graph and this idea
and that, I am certain more than a few asked why they should even bother
with stereo because it is "so hard to do properly." This is probably not a
big factor, but it is one. Some have mentioned this observation as well, so
it is not just me. Here is a group of people that beginners and future
stereo photographers look to for info, and the Technology kills it for
them. no wonder stereo is dead in the mass market.

Try selling your images and viewers outside of eBay, and you just might
starve. Even the Porn / adult images  (Portraits?) will not sell in the
mass marketplace.

Even the grand, old stereocards were wildly popular, but dropped off over
the decades as movies, TV, Radio and simple photography replaced them. Why
is this? Stereo is still stereo, and people are still people. What changed?
One would think that if stereocards were popular in the 1800's they should
be popular now, but they are not as far as the public goes.

My old boss was in business that lasted for more years than most on this
list have been alive. We were THE photographic firm in Utah, and even then,
stereo was seldom used commercially. We pushed stereo on many customers and
they simply were not interested. Personally, I think stereo will continue
to rise and fall as it has for decades, and if you want to commercialize
it, you have to pick the right time. Then, it will die again.

There are photographers who are professionals that have a chance to sell
the public on stereo, but don't. Perhaps they do not understand it, or fear
that the public will not accept it. Portraits were mentioned, and I think
the vast majority want prints, not stereo in a viewer. Perhaps this needs
to change.

Enough.

RM