[photo-3d] October OSPS Meeting Report

["Dr. George A. Themelis" <drt-3d@xxxxxxx>]

Another fine meeting in Cleveland this past Tuesday.
Since that was the night of the first presidential 
debate, I was expecting attendance to be low.  To my
surprise, 36 people showed up, one of the largest 
crowd ever!

In attendance were our regular members from Pittsburgh
and Michigan and also 4 visitors from Detroit and a
local gentleman who became our newest member.  This
young fellow works at Case Western Reserve University
in the visual arts department and he is into photography
and virtual reality.  He was so impressed and excited
with stereo photography that he bought a Stereo Realist
right at the spot. (A local camera dealer has joined
our club from sincere interest in stereo and he managed
to sell two Realists last night!)

Our club meetings have two parts.  Last night the first
part was "Member's Presentations" while the second part
was a stereo slide competition with assignment "Bubbles
and Balloons".

The Member's Presentations are informal presentations
lasting from 5 to 20 minutes.  We schedule more than
one presentations to take about 45 minutes total. Last 
meeting we had the following presentations:

- Harold Kaiman "3d imaging in Medical Science"
- Chuck Weiss "Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Rome"
- George Themelis "Scenes from the NSA convention in Mesa"
- Mark Dottle "Restoration of a TDC stereo projector"

Perhaps the variety of the these presentations explains
the larger than expected attendance.

Harold very nicely summarized the topic and his interest
in it (he is a Radiologist) and promised to follow up
with an article in our newsletter and a View-Master
presentation next month.

Chuck showed excellent stereo slides with his usual
very interesting & engaging narration.

I showed slides that Ron Fross and myself took during
the NSA convention in Mesa this past July.  In addition
to some spectacular 3d by the pool shots, our members
had the chance to "meet" stereo personalities like Jon
Golden, Dalia Miller, Dave Kesner, Paul Talbot, Paul
Wing, Robert Bloomberg, Boris Starosta, Frank Flocks,
John Dukes, Grant Campos, Dennis Green and many more
that I forget.  (No pictures of the "fist fight" though.)

Mark Dottle did a great job restoring his TDC projector
that was almost destroyed in a house fire two years
ago.  The finish and paint job in this projector was
beyond my imagination.  Much better than new, while
still maintaining the 1950s character.  Well done Mark!

In our slide competition we had a unique situation where 
all 8 awarded slides tied in first place.  So each one of
these 8 slides took first place and there were no second 
or third places or HMs.  I happened to have 3 out of
these 8 slides, an unfair advantage of being a judge for
the night.  The top score was 23 points which means that
one judge gave a 7, the other a 8 and rounded up I got
an 8 which gave me 23.  Oh well...  I'll do what Mark
is doing this season, not enter the next few competitions.

One of these 8 slides (Robert Grant's daughter blowing 
bubbles) took the "people's vote" so in that respect this
was no. 1.  (We allow our attendants to vote for their
favorite slide and the winner gets an extra point in the
standings.)  This was also my favorite slide of the night.

The interesting thing about Robert's slide is that it was
mounted seconds before the start of the meeting.  Five
minutes before we were ready to start Robert asked me if
I had a 4p RBT mount.  We walked all the way in the back
of my office to get one.  So Robert managed to mount his
slide the last second and what a good job he did!  This
says a lot for both Robert and RBT!

After the competition Robert said that he owes me a 
favor and he plans to keep the mount.  Kidddingly I said
that he owed me more than that and I ended up richer
by $0.60.

Overall, a fine meeting.  You will read all the details
in Stereogram 5.3, with added pictures of Mark's projector
the usual tutorials and more.

Thanks for reading!

George Themelis