Gallery 2 of Stereo Pictures for Cross-Eyed Viewing.
Many of these are experimental photos, not perfect, but indicative of what can be done with homebult close-up 3d cameras, hand-held 3d using the shift method, and pictures from the air, using the plane's motion to give the parallax shift.A fern on the forest floor. Taken with a digital camera hand-held.
Bumblebee, taken with the bugshooter1 camera on Ektachrome.
There's a honeybee in this picture. Actually two of them.
The bee in the last picture was almost lost in the greenery. Here's an example of how much cropping you can get away with even in an old stereo taken on film.
Honeybee at work.
Another honeybee.
Here's a pleasant scene at Shaw's Gardens (The Missouri Botanical Garden) in St. Louis, MO. Hand-held digital picture taken in 2005.
Museums and zoos generally don't allow tripods and flash. And some displays are rather dimly lighted. Then there's the problem of other people being in the way of good shots. But sometimes you get lucky. The next two pictues were made with a digital camera, hand held, moving the camera sidewise about 1 inch between shots. The first picture is a tropical tree frog. The second is Cratophyrus Ornatus (Ornate Horned Frog). Time the shots with the frog's breathing. Taken Feb. 2008 at Clyde Peeling's Reptileland, near Allenwood, PA.
Handheld stereo with large interocular can make distant scenes look like miniatures or model railroad layouts. This one, looking down on Salzburg, Austria, had a separation of about 10 feet, obtained by taking one picture, walking to a location 10 feet away, framing the scene identically and taking the second picture. Sometimes you get a usable picture.
The "Pilatushaus" in Oberammergau. The wall paintings, being called "Lüftlmalerei" here (i.e. "free air paintings") were made by Franz Seraph Zwinck in 1784. It shows the scene where Roman governor Pilatus speaks his condemnation of Jesus. The Pilatushaus currently houses craftsmen who do traditional work in their chambers. It is called the "living workshop". It is also the location of the marriage license bureau.
Handheld stereo from an airplane, near Albuquerque in 2004 with digital camera. The plane does the moving for you, so you must take two pictures in quick succession, framing them the same. It is best to aim perpendicular to the plane's motion, and use a portion of the window that has the least distortion.
Clouds taken from an airplane. The parallax is a bit too large. I should have taken the second exposure more quickly.
Above the clouds.
For scenics and travel photography, the stereo cameras of the 1950s were ideal. Certain models are still eagerly sought for those who do film photography. Among the best were the Realists, Kodak, and the French Verascope, which had a wider format. Pictured here is the Revere camera.
Deadwood in the Colorado National Monument, Summer, 1971. Verascope camera with Kodachrome.
The same scene as Ansel Adams might have liked it. The blue record was removed from the color picture, then it was rendered in black and white, with boosted gamma and contrast.
Riverside geyser at Yellowstone National Park, Sept, 1971. Verascope stereo camera with Kodachrome.
Tulips in early May, 2008. Hand-held digital camera.
All pictures copyright by Donald E. Simanek.
Appendix.
One of the important characteristics of a stereo photograph is the horizontal angle of view. If it is too small, the picture seems "cramped" and the sensation is of "looking down a tunnel". On the other hand, excessive "wide-angle" stereos have a different sort of artificial feel to them. When we view a scene in nature, the peripheral areas of vision have negligible stereo depth. Here's some data and calculations:
| Camera | Lens focal length | Film or Sensor | Horizontal angle |
|---|---|---|---|
| 35mm film 8 sprocket wide | 50 mm | 24 x 36 mm | 39.5° |
| European 3d format 7 sprocket | 40 mm | 24 x 29.5 mm | 40.5° |
| Realist stereo 5 sprocket | 35 mm | 24 x 23 mm | 36.4° |
| Half frame 4 sprocket | 50 mm | 24 x 18 mm | 40° |
| Nimslo 4 sprocket (half frame). | 30 mm | 22 x 18 mm | 33.4° |
| 90° rotation devices. Tri-Delta with 35mm film. | 50 mm | 18 x 24 mm | 27° |
| Sub-frame digital SLR. 4:3 sensor. | 55mm 38 mm 18mm | 15.7 x 23.5 mm | 24.1° 34.4° 66.3° |
| Half sub-frame, Loreo lens-in-a-cap. | 40mm | 5.9 x 15.7 mm | 16.7 mm |
Ortho Stereo.
Stereo photographers refer to "ortho stereo" as the condition in which the stereo picture is taken and viewed so that (1) The camera's stereo base matches that of the eyes, and (2) The viewed picture subtends the same visual angle as the camera saw and recorded. This ensures that distance and depth relations of the scene are faithfully reproduced. Let's state, for the record, that few people have ever viewed stereo under ortho-stereo conditions. Consider the popular "Realist" format which recorded a field of 36° horizontally. When projected on a screen, a viewer would have to sit a distance of 2/3 the screen width to see the picture as the camera saw it. Very few people ever sit that close. The "standard" hand held stereo viewers generally had lenses of at least 45 mm focal length. They should have had lenses matched to the camera, 35 mm, for realistic reproduction. This is the dirty little secret of stereo photography. Even worse was the popular View Master format, which always made pictures look as if seen through a tunnel.
Stereo photography systems are a collection of compromises. We probably should be content if the results "look pleasing" with sufficient depth to give a feeling of solidity, but not so great as to cause visual discomfort. After all, flat pictures, and 2d movies aren't seen with correctly reproduced scale either. If a movie were presented entirely faithfully, the use of wide angle and telephoto lenses would not be allowed. Artistic and other conditions often triumph over faithful reproduction. Note that when you use a pair of binoculars or a stereo microscope, you are also altering distance and depth. Even IMAX giant screen movies, though they have the capability of more exact reproduction of nature, seldom do, and freely employ camera lenses of varying focal lengths for dramatic effect.
Therefore I don't apologize for the fact that my stereo close-up photography devices produce "unfaithful" rendering of depth. If the pictures "look good" I'm satisfied. The main "flaw" is that depth differences are smaller than in nature, but this makes them more comfortable to view. Also, any presentation of stereo in a book or computer screen forces the eyes to focus at a near distance, while recreating a scene that may have been at a much greater distance. This is certain to cause the brain to sense that it is not perceiving the real scene, but a replica of that scene, recreating shapes, color, texture and depth, but not entirely faithfully. And close-up photography of small subjects necessarily gives results that they naked eyes could never see, whatever method is used.
Snowflakes.
Pictures of jugglers.
Computer graphics stereos, including animated ones.
Knots.
More cross-eyed stereos in 3d Gallery One.
Stereo view cards in 3d Gallery Three.
Building a digital stereo close-up photography system in 3d Gallery Four.
Review of the Loreo stereo attachment 3d Gallery Five.
Wildlife photography in your backyard, 3d Gallery Six.
A home-built digital stereo camera using mirrors 3d Gallery Seven.
Stereo close-up photography in your garden 3d Gallery Eight.
Stereo photography in your aquarium 3d Gallery Nine.
Stereo with two synchronized digital cameras. [Coming soon.]
Return to the the 3d and illusions page.
Return to Donald Simanek's front page.