Re: [photo-3d] Are beamsplitters crappy?

[Ron Beck <rbeck@xxxxxxxx>]

"Crappy" is in the eye of the beholder.  There are pros and cons with
every system used for 3D photography.  You just need to determine what
would be best for the results you want.  The mirrored splitter shown at
the web site looks pretty interesting and a "home made" design could
probably be done relatively inexpensively.

My recommendation would be to experiment.  Get some rolls of 12 exposure
print film and some cheap mirrors.  Make a setup similar to the splitter
shown at the web site below.  Use play-doh or modeling clay to hold the
mirrors in place so you can move them around a bit.  Then take some
shots and log (i.e. write down) all your settings, mirror angles etc... 
Have the roll developed and see what you get.  If you really like the
results, great!  Continue on and make a permanent holder for your
mirrors.  Investigate first surface mirrors rather than second surface
(i.e. plain old) mirrors.  If not, investigate some of the other methods
of making stereo prints.  My first prints consisted of two disposables
rubber-banded to a board.  Shutters were synchronized by the
"1-2-3-push" method.  It didn't always stop running water or waving
leaves on a windy day, but it did a good enough job to give me some nice
prints of the kids feeding ducks!

As for making cards, the splitter method would give you (more or less)
two 4x3 images from a normal 4x6 print if you wanted to cut them apart
and mount them on card stock.  They would give you a great pair for
using a hand-held lorngette viewer or for using one of the
Loreo/Argus/Discovery 3D camera viewers (see http://www.3dstereo.com). 
Cards made using the "cha-cha" or dual camera method gives you a much
larger area to work with, but you still have to trim the photos.

In any event, experiment with what you have available, borrow what you
can and take a second mortgage for the rest :-) :-)

Regards,
Ron


Bryan Mumford wrote:
> 
> sstiles pointed us to the web site http://www.3dquarium.com
> 
> I looked at this web site and the sample images. I was struck by my
> dissatisfaction with the images taken with their beamsplitter. It
> leaves a very narrow image space for the stereo pair. I suppose this
> is unavoidable, but I had not seen it demonstrated before. Would
> others agree that beam-split pairs are unsatisfactory? I didn't think
> about it this way before, but I'm getting four times as much picture
> data in two full frame cha-chas than I would get in a single frame
> split image. Maybe a beamsplitter is not a worthwhile project after
> all.
> 
> Bryan Mumford
> Santa Barbara, California
> http://www.bmumford.com