Monday, February 9, 2009

3D Experiments

I'm trying something new today. By taking two photos of the same scene at slightly different angles, focusing on the same spot in the middle of the frame, It should be possible to end up with a 3 dimensional image. Since our eyes are like two cameras that see the would at slightly different angles.

View MasterSo I gave it a try. Making the image isn't hard, but trying to see the depth in the pictures without special equipment, like a View-Master, is a different story. It is possible, however, with some practice. The trick is to get one of your eyes to look at one side while the other is looking at the other side. I'm not really sure how to explain how to do this. Try looking between the two images and slowly crossing your eyes. I find that everything goes blurry and then slowly, the two images drift together until it looks like there's three images. Now try to focus your vision on the center image. It takes some time to get use to. It's a similar technique to view Magic Eye images.

This seems to be the largest I can make the images while still being able to see the 3D effect. I think because the distance of an object in one image to the same object in the other image is roughly the same as the distance between my eyes, does that make sense?




Below are animations made from the same photos used above, fading from one to the other:



2 comments:

  1. That's really cool, I found that it was easier to look at when I held a piece of paper between my eyes and right down the center of the two images. That way my left eye can't see the right image and the right eye can't see the left image.

    The Plant one worked the best I found, possibly because it's got a greater range of depth of objects.

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  2. That's a good idea.

    Another strategy I heard was to get really close to the image and slowly back away.

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