P3D Re: Kodak Stereo Prints

[kiwi1957@xxxxxxxxxx]

> I've been told that if I took a roll of film to a photolab that had > been
exposed in a Kodak Stereo camera I'd not get them developed.  > OK there are
only 5 perfs to the picture but why wouldn't they be 
> able to make prints and I could trim the area off the print that 
> was not exposed? Does it screw up the photolabs automated machine 
> or something? Cliff 

Cliff:

I don't know if you have have seen mass production processing and  printing
equipment up close. I am assuming that you are asking about color print film
processing at a mass production lab. You didn't indicate film type or lab
type.

In brief, your film is spliced together with many others onto a big spool
and is sent through the film processor to give you negatives.

After film processing, these films are rolled onto another spool that can be
fit onto the printer. Lab technicians also watch out for blank or--pardon
me, please--"odd format" films like single frame, panoramic, or whatever,
like stereo, particularly Nishiki or Image Tech stuff. Yes, this "odd stuff"
does interrupt the automated process if the *customer failed* to disclose
what they were submitting their order. It also catches stuff like B&W and
transperency film that the labs' receiving and sorting departments did not
catch and sent through C41 anyway. 

During this step, the film is notched by frame before going to the printing
machine. The printing machine stops and exposes the images based on the
notches; the notches also indicate to the film cutting machines where to
slice and dice your films ever 3 or 4 frames. (I'm not joking about slice
and dice!) 

A printing machine expects the image to be centered in the machine's  frame
aperture. In a standard full frame 35mm printer setup, if you tried to run
some smaller sized images (like stereo or single frame), the clear space
between exposures would be read by the printing machine too. That would
potentially throw off color balance and density. You might end up with
washed out prints.

Your best bet would be to ask the lab if they have a half frame 35mm setup
and ask them to try to print as-is on that format. Half frame represents far
far less than 1% of the 35mm color print film processing that they get
daily, so half frame stuff often gets routed to the slower semi-automated
printing equipment. This often requires a human being to manually position
each frame on the printer's film plate. It's slow awkward and tedious.

Better yet, if you know a pro-lab or a quality one-hour lab really well,
they might be more accomodating. When I worked in a pro-lab, I made my own
little opaque mask that enabled me to print Stereo Realist format on our
equipment. Of course, from a pro-lab you are asking for custom services and
corresponding higher prices. 

Otherwise, it's often a hassle to accomodate this statistically very rare
request compared to the millions of standard format 35mm processing that
labs churn out everyday. It's very very inefficient for them to fully
accomodate such a request that you posed.





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