3-D: use kids' red and cyan glasses

Add a Comment

Comment by Jon Clarke on October 18, 2009 at 10:15pm

There's quite a few 3D vids on YouTube and there's a 3d Webcam called a Minoru3D which looks quite a cool gadget.

Comment by Paul Sanderson, on October 18, 2009 at 9:15pm

To get the two separate images needed at the outset I took the pic using a stereo(3D) camera. The one I use is a Kodak Stereo from 1954, which uses ordinary 35mm transparency film, but when you press the shutter release it produces two slightly different images rather than just one. You view the two images through a twin-eyepiece viewer, and your brain thinks it's looking at a true life 3D scene. So that answers your question about what camera I used, but to get the single anaglyph image you see here there's more to it.

I scanned each image and then used a process in Photoshop to overlay one on t'other, each with a colour bias. The red lens in the specs favours one colour bias but not the other, while the cyan lens does the opposite. Thus, again, the brain sees two angles of the same thing and thinks it's 3D.

Red with the cyan lens (rather than red/green or red/blue) gives the best colour rendition for this system (anaglyphs), but it still isn't particularly good, and it's not sharp either. It's what you see in comics or on breakfast cereal boxes. Using a bulb-lit twin-lens viewer to view the original transparency pairs is much, much better: true-life colours and pin-sharp.

Comment by Jon Clarke on October 18, 2009 at 7:17pm

Great pic Paul, what type of camera did you use?