A Few of my Stereo .GIFs

After reading and commenting on the recent post How to Take a 3-D photo with Almost Any Camera I looked out some examples of the .GIFs I had produced. These give a 3-D effect in a single image.

They are produced in software such as Adobe’s animation programs and consist of the two offset images in seperate layers that the software flicks back and forth between them. It is not as disturbing as you might imagine and it does give a pretty good result.

I have decided, however, that placing the main feature in the same position gives the best effect. The feature image is a good example, whereas a friend gave his opinion that the wine glass and bottle saved him the expense of a drink for the same result.

The location for the feature image is New Zealand’s South Island at the top of a pass between Queenstown and Wanaka in the winter.

I made my own viewer using the lenses from a 3 dioptre pair of $2 dollar shop reading glasses and scrap timber. The image pairs are printed on an inkjet printer and mounted on card.

Stereo was quite the thing in late Victorian and later times and still has a strong following. I certainly enjoy it and it is not too difficult, even with just a single camera. The technique I use and which, I now learn, is called the cha-cha method. This involves taking the two images, the first with your weight on your left foot and a second with your weight shifted to your right foot. This gives just enough displacement sideways to produce the 3-D effect.

The article mentioned at the beginning give a huge amount of information on techniques and equipment if you feel like giving it a try and is well worth careful study.

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