Sunday, December 11, 2005

Harbinger?

Is this a sign of things to come? I have hit just about every non-photo store in my neighborhood looking for simple ISO100 speed, color print film (as opposed to slide film). Should be a snap to find, right? That's what I thought too...but evidently we're both wrong. Everybody stocks ISO 200, 400, and 800. Nobody has 100.

Old-ass Safeway: No.
New-skool Mega-Safeway: Nope.
CVS #1: None.
CVS #2: Not here either.
Giant Foods: Shit, they got rid of their entire film dropoff kiosk!

The reason for my quest? A couple of weeks back I made a total spur of the moment purchase on Ebay. I happened across a bidless auction with 52 seconds left. The auction was for an inexpensive 3D camera. No bids? $12 selling price? No brainer.

So here I sit with my new gadget, countless hours of fun on-hold due to a lack of film.

With this camera, you can use it as it was meant to be used (see "What is lenticular"), but there is only a single place in the country that can develop the film (and at a premium, no less). Or, you can cover the inner two lenses, and use the photos taken by the outermost lenses. This will allow you to create a stereo image, similar to those popular at the turn of the century. Also, you can create twitchy animated .GIFs that cycle through both images, tricking your brain into seeing them in 3D. Skilled viewers can actually train their eyes to "free view" the image pairs, negating the need for the viewer itself. This technique is the same used to see those "Magic Eye" images, popular a few years back (some find them tacky...I happen to still dig).

So, I've either got to put in another order with Amazon, or hit one of my local camera shops to finish-off the camera and start learning the world of ultra-budget 3D photography. Imagine the shots I should be able to take some pretty crazy mountain bike race shots once I perfect this!