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.

May Program

• Club competition theme:  Texture. 
• Both the Digital and Slide projectors will be available, so bring any images you want to project.

• The monthly Club competition theme was Sequences.  Bob Venezia took 1st and 2nd place and Joan Story had two sequences that tied for 3rd.
• Prizes for the monthly competition now consist of a role of slide film, anaglyph glasses, a Loreo Light viewer, or a Sony 64MB Memory Stick.
• Treasurer's report.
• Librarian's report.
• Martha McCann donated one of Shab Levy's books to club library.
• Don mentioned that he had ordered two Kodak digital cameras from Woot to use as an inexpensive High Definition video rig.
• Don also had a CD of old Stereo Views form digital archives and a squeeze view cardboard viewer from the Exploratorium
• Leroy Nordby told his story about buying a Gold Stereo Realist from eBay.  His investigation has led him to believe that it may be one of three gold realists that were owned by Bob Hope, Harold Lloyd, or President Eisenhower.
• There was a discussion about the PSSCC Newsgroup.  Those that want to subscribe can go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PSSCC/join  (You will need a Yahoo! account.)
• Slides were chosen to send to the next round of the ISCC.  Bob Venezia and Wayne Pennington each had two slides chosen and Joan Story and Mike Comstock each had one slide chosen.
• The club viewed the PSA traveling show:  Sequences.
• Ray Reusch presented slides of his trip to Fiords of Norway.
• Don Munsil had some digital presentations:
  • Scanned stereo cards from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
  • Images from Expo 67 in Montreal.
  • A video of cheery blossoms in  Osaka, Japan.

Phyllis Maslin's Show

Phyllis Maslin is having a show "Farewell to the Gorges" at Hungry's Gallery in Houston Texas from March 15 through April 15.  More information can be found at:  http://www.hungrysgallery.com/currentexhibition.html

A message from Bob Venezia:

It's time again to pick our entries for the International Stereo Club Competition, to be held in May. Yes, please mine those shoeboxes for your most impressive slides. I know I usually enter slides that I think will be crowd pleasers. But sometimes I'll throw in a slide that I love, but I don't think anyone else will necessarily like. And sometimes, it's that slide that turns out to be an audience favorite.

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.