INTRODUCTION ixcould not understand that in ortho-stereo the final magnification
is unity, that is, it does not exist visually.
Therefore, in this volume we shall deliberately disregard all
of these fascinating mathematical complexities and treat our
subject from the only rational, stereoscopic point of view; that
is, with the visual appearance as the standard. If you can’t see it,
it isn’t there.
At the same time, most readers will have sufficient curiosity
to want to know “why” now and then. Also a superficial knowl-
edge of stereo theory will often be of assistance in producing bet-
ter work, so a certain amount of theory is necessary. However, it
will be kept as elementary as possible. In any event, just re-
member that you do not really have to know even this simple
theory to enable you to make excellent stereograms.
As a matter of fact the writer personally knows two stereogra-
phers who cannot even load their cameras, but have the dealer do
it, yet they both make perfectly satisfactory stereograms and often
produce really beautiful slides!
The extent to which you delve into theory is a matter of your
own personal choice. But above all remember that stereography
is the easiest type of photography, and it can be mastered with
little effort. In fact it is just as easy to operate the stereo camera
successfully as it is to use the familiar box camera.
Stereography is the automatic photography that produces the
kind of pictures you have always dreamed of but never really ex-
pected to see.
The word stereoscopy is compounded from the Greek stereos
(solid or firm) and skopos (the act of vision). Thus stereoscopy
means the act of seeing “solid,” or actually, seeing in all three
dimensions.
Stereoscopic photography is the only medium known by which
the appearance of an object or scene may be reproduced in every
detail so that the image appears to the eyes exactly as did the
original object. At first this does not seem to describe more than
the ordinary photograph until we stop to recall that the best of
conventional photographs falls far short of reproducing “every
detail.” The ordinary or planar photograph does not reproduce
definite size or distance, it does not distinctly separate every
plane, it does not definitely exhibit the depth contour of an ob-