It shouldn't take much insight to see that I was NOT all that pleased with my investment in the Pentax beam-splitter attachment. While I am not thrilled with the vertical format, the real issues were the lack of a system to maintain the proper alignment of the unit and the hypostereo mirror seperation. This aversion extended to the Loreo Beam-Splitter Camera, which I dismissed as a trivial piece of plastic engineering unworthy of serious consideration. Well, time passed, and I was eventually given one of the cameras about the time I became more familiar with the potential of the 4 x 6 Stereo Format. The fact was, the camera was both cute and clever and I would have used it a lot more except for the limitations of the fixed f-stop/shutter system!
Loreo was obviously working pretty steadily to perfect their products and I was gaining a somewhat grudging appreciation of their product line. While cruising through their web page, I noticed another beam-splitter product, the 3D Lens-in-a-Cap . This is actually a set of beam-splitter options designed for a range of modern 35 mm SLR and digital SLR cameras. The mounting system supplied for each camera type is a locking, bayonet mount which eliminates my gripe about alignment. The mirror seperation is greater than that of my old Pentax system, resulting in a better stereo effect. This was a product that seemed to deserve a closer look!
Unlike the old Pentax unit, the 3D Lens-in-a-Cap was not designed to mount on the front of a standard lens. Instead, the unit has a pair of f-11 lenses built into the assembly and the entire unit mounts in place of a normal lens. The lenses, which are plastic (with a focal-length of 38 mm), do limit the optical performance of the system, but exactly how much? The assembly has three focus settings and the system f-stop can be set to f-11 or f-22. With a modern SLR camera, you would select shutter-priority for setting the exposure and disable the auto-focus to use the unit. The samples provided on the Loreo Web Site were pretty impressive:
I have reduced the size of this image (from the Loreo web
site) considerably to make it easier to free-view, but it is obvious that the quality is
quite good. If you add to this the convenience of most of the features normally associated
with modern SLR cameras (through-the-lens - TTL - image viewing, TTL auto-exposure
calculation, TTL flash metering, automatic compensation for film speed, etc.), one might
easily learn to deal with the vertical format, given all the other conveniences. Since the
retail price of the 3D Lens-in-a-Cap is under $60, I had to order one for trial with my
Canon Rebel SLR camera!
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