What's your macro philosophy?

[T3D john bercovitz <bercov@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

So what's your macro philosophy?  I was thinking of taking some
slide bar macro/tabletops but first I have to ruminate, as usual 
(that's the fun part, aside from looking at the results).  I could 
use the Spicer-Bercovitz maofd formula and take viewable macros 
from fairly close up using a 65 mm stereobase.  Although this would 
be realistic, I don't think it would look so hot because when you
mount them, you'd probably mount to the window and a standard 
window is a ways away.  It's far enough away that I think the
vergence clue would intrude and tell you it ain't so.

It seems to me this is another argument for using reduced stereobase.
If you use a reduced stereobase, you increase all three dimensions
by the ratio of normal/used (that's 65 mm divided by whatever base
you actually used).  So if a macro is shot at a foot distance with
a 1/7th stereobase, the near point will be at 7' which matches
the nominal Realist near point.  Ought to work out well but of
course the reconstructed image will be 7X.  That's not entirely
bad of course but it's not entirely realistic either.  8-)

An alternative would be to mask off the outer portions of a wide 
format mount (say an 8P RBT).  That would help with the vergence 
and window distance if the vergence control on the projector is left 
at its normal setting.  This is of course a good formula for ghosting.

The only remaining problem would be a problem for people who still 
have some accommodation and that is that focus distance is way off.  
I don't think this is too serious, though.

John B

For further info or a refresher on maofd,

The paper describing it is at:
http://werple.net.au/~kiewavly/bases.html

The excel spreadsheet is at:
ftp://bobcat.tamu-commerce.edu/pub/photo/photo-3d/technical/maofd/


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