[photo-3d] Huge Thanks to Paul Talbot & RMM

[<donaldparks@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    When I was trying to get back into shooting stereo slides about a year ago I
was facing a major slide mount roadblock.  I built a twin camera rig using
Yashica Samurai SLR AF 3.0x zoom half frame cameras.  In the late 80's and early
90's Yashica made several models of this very compact and handy 35mm film
camera.  The SLR light path and film path are both vertical so the cameras are
relatively thin.  I was able to mount two cameras close enough to each other,
side by side, to have a base separation of 70mm and be able to use both eyes (in
stereo) for composing pictures through the viewfinders.  The images on the film
are essentially Nimslo size but they are horizontal rather than vertical, 4p
height rather than 4p width.  The twin camera rig worked great and was lots of
fun to use but how was I going to mount and view the stereo pairs?  There were
no standard 41x101 size stereo mounts for horizontal half frame film chips.

      I met Paul Talbot at the Green Bay NSA and asked him if he'd ever seen any
horizontal half frame mounts.  The answer was no.  He said he'd get back to me
if he ever came across any.  About a month later, he contacted me with the news
that he was working on alternative heat seal mounts and he could work with me on
getting some custom mounts made as a test.  I was very impressed that Paul even
remembered me out of the hundreds of folks he met for the first time at Green
Bay.  He's amazing.

     Paul and I spent many, many hours communicating by email to finalize a
mount design that would suit my needs.  We had one batch of mounts made that
weren't cut exactly to the specifications.  They were great compared to having
no mounts at all and I figured that I could live with them given the effort
already expended.  Paul was not satisfied, however.  He pursued getting another
batch of mounts made with the error corrected.  I picked up those mounts from
Paul at the Mesa NSA and am once again hooked on taking stereo.

     It's been a great pleasure doing business with Paul Talbot at RMM.  He is
doing a great service for Stereo Photography.  I'm glad that Linda started the
thread on heat seal mounts so I was encouraged to come forward to publicly thank
Paul for his efforts. -  Don Parks

Dr. Donald J. Parks
Mechanical Engineering Dept.
Boise State University