The Puget Sound Stereo Camera Club meets on the second Saturday of each month except July and August. Our annual season runs from September until June. Meetings start at 12:00 noon, unless otherwise noted in the special meeting notice.

Meetings are open to the public at no charge and usually last about three hours during which there are instructional programs and at least one projected 3D slide show. Slide shows are usually "Stereo Realist" format, however, all forms of 3D are welcome, including the "Viewmaster", the European 7 sprocket type, stereograph prints and standard 35 mm slides.

There is also a monthly competition on a theme.

January Program

• This month's club competition theme is Machines. We will have separate Slide and Digital competitions. See details below.
• Both the Digital and Slide projectors will be available, so bring any images you want to project.

December PSSCC Meeting Happenings

• Don Munsil talked more about his new Fuji W1 3D digital camera.
• There was a discussion on using external strobes with the Fuji W1 camera.
• There were discussions on the Zalman 3D monitor and the Acer Aspire 3D notebook PC.
• Elliott Swanson brought in a stereo aerial map reader.
• Don also brought in some 3D books: "London in 3D", "Villages Lost in Time" by Brian May (of Queen), "Eye Popping 3-D Pets"
• There was a discussion of the "Garden Delights" at the Bellevue Botanical Garden.
• There was a show of hands, and as of Dec 12, six PSSCC members own Fuji W1 cameras.
• Mart McCann brought products from the 3D Center for sale and mentioned that the 3D Center will hold a raffle for a Fuji W1 on Feb 21.
• The club competition for the theme of Water was held. A separate competition was held for Slides and Digital. Bob Venezia, Stewart Turley, and Bob Gordon were winners in the Slide competition. Don Munsil, Greg Perez, and Jeff Brower were winners in the Digital competition.
• Greg Perez tried his Seattle Center video again. He also presented images he took at Mowich Lake.
• Wayne Pennington presented images of a pottery pit firing at Golden Garden Park.

Monthly Competition Themes

The votes are in and have been tallied. Here are the monthly themes for the remainder of the season:

Preparing Stereo Pairs for Digital Projection

Dave Casey and Don Munsil have put together a complete digital projection system, including a portable PC and two projectors. Here are the instructions from Don on how to set up your images for digital projection:

For photos, the left and right sides just need to be side-by-side in the same file. No borders or margins are necessary. It would be best if they're parallel, but it's pretty easy to handle cross-eyed as well. Just don't mix the two in the same set. :-)

If they want to optimize the image to the exact projection size (which isn't necessary, but can make the image look a little better), they should resize the images so they're exactly 1024x768 per side, or 2048x768 for the entire image.

Here's the steps I use to create a projection-optimized image in StereoPhotoMaker:

• Open the stereo file or the left/right file separately.
• Switch to anaglyph mode (if you like) just to check cropping, window, etc.
• Hit X if the image is psuedo (inverted depth)
• Hit R to resize the image
• Type 1024 for width and 768 for height
• Select the "Keep aspect-ratio with border" option
• Check the "resample" box (much better quality - don't forget this)
• Click OK or hit Enter on the keyboard
• Hit U to sharpen the image
• The default of 30 is probably a little too aggressive. I'm finding 15 about right for me. (Or just open the final 2048x768 image in your favorite program like Photoshop and use your favorite sharpening method.)
• Click OK or hit Enter on the keyboard
• Select Side-by-side from the toolbar or hit F9 on the keyboard, if you're not already in side-by-side mode
• Hit S to save a stereo file. Give it a good name and save it into a "projection optimized" folder

The second and subsequent photos will all keep the same defaults, so it goes much faster. Assuming you don't need to crop, align, or set the window, you can just open the image, hit R, Enter, U, Enter, S, and select a new name for the image.

For videos, we can handle pretty much anything except (for now) encrypted (commercial) DVDs. In order to play DVDs, they need to be decrypted. I use DVDFab Platinum for that, which is a $50 program that has lots of features, including copying DVDs to the hard drive and removing encryption. This is absolutely fair use if you own the DVD.

The computer has the latest versions of the MPEG2, MPEG1, XVid, DivX, MPEG4, and WMV codecs installed, and Stereoscopic Player (the commercial software by Peter Wimmer) for playback.

Directions to the Federal Way Senior Center
From I 5, turn East at the Hwy. 18 exit. Travel East and take the 1st exit at 32nd Ave. S (Sign reads Weyerhaeuser Road). Turn South on 32nd until you reach 344th St. (first left) and go East on 344th until you reach 38th Ave. S (1st right). Travel South on 38th to 352nd and turn left (East). Go 3 blocks, Senior Center is on the North (left) side of the street.