[photo-3d] projection versus hand viewing

["David W. Kesner" <drdave@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I just finsihed viewing my last few rolls by projection. These 
were images from my recent caving trip and contained some of 
my best work yet. I honestly thought that there would be some 
medal winners in this group. In the hand viewer they were 
truly awesome.

However, they did not translate to projection very well at 
all. Some of it was because of ghosting from high contrast 
between the blackness of the cave and the whiteness of the 
ice. Mostly it was the lack of detail and definition in 
projection that ruined them. In a hand viewer you could see 
the banding pattern in the ice and the different textures of 
the surfaces. In a big room shot that took multiple 25B bulbs 
to light up you could see the ropes running down the ice face. 
Most all of this was lost in projection and that caused a 
great image to be merely mediocre. (Don't worry Dr. T. the 
image of "Sam Behind The Ice" still turned out well enough to 
go to DGS)

I have also had this happen the opposite way. I had images 
that I was ready to toss because they weren't any good in a 
hand viewer. Some were slightly out of focus or lacked any 
fine detail or had some small blemish. In projected these all 
went away or at least weren't noticable to the point of 
actually being good.

If you are entering your images in any sort of situation where 
they will be projected (exhibitions, club competitions, public 
shows) you owe it to yourself and everyone else to view it 
projected first.

I admit that I take my images with hand viewing in mind and 
that is probably why I haven't done better in exhibitions than 
I have (not that I am complaining!). Hopefully after I have 
done this long enough I will be able to tell how well a scene 
will photograph for projection as well as I do for hand 
viewing.

That's all for now,

David W. Kesner
Boise, Idaho, USA
drdave@xxxxxxxxxx