Your brain is complex enough to take the images your eyes see and map them into a three dimensional image. Depth perception is what allows you to judge object distances for things as simple as walking without colliding with other pedestrians and driving without crashing into other moving cars. Depth perception is a necessary tool for sports like fencing and archery.
But when it comes to photography, and the presentation of a flat image, in order to see in 3D, you'll need help either from a 3D viewer, or 3D glasses.
Stereopticons are viewers that take two images, mounted on a single slide and enable you to see them in 3D. The early version of the viewer was large and cumbersome, and permitted you to see glass slides. However, this dates back to 1850, not exactly a time period when you would think 3D images were popular. We have an antique stereopticon in the house, which is about the size of a pair of binoculars and several slides made for the viewer. The household stereopticons were lenses mounted in wooden frames and were themselves works of art.
Fast forward a hundred years and you have stereo cameras, with double lenses. These cameras still relied on slides, which were mounted in specialty cardboard double slide mounts. You then used a small plastic viewer to see your photographic images in 3D. You can still order the cardboard slide mounts and plastic viewers. However 35mm stereo cameras are hard to come by. We have a 3D viewer, camera and empty slide mounts carefully wrapped and stored away.
At the end of the 1950's and beginning of the 1960's, there were a number of 3D movies made, which featured anaglyph 3D images. You could watch cheesy yet classic movies, like Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D with the help of 3D glasses and many books of 3D photography were released at this time, with cardboard 3D glasses included for viewing. We also have these in the house.
Why do we have so many 3D related items in the house? This one should be easy to guess. My husband was in the photography industry and has been obsessed with taking photographs and 3D imagery since he was a child.
However 3D photography was an expensive habit, and relied solely on devices to view the images you took and did not translate into easy printing or viewing for other people.
And then we entered the age of computers, Photoshop, YouTube and digital photography.
And let's not forget the movie Avatar.
While it featured a mediocre plot, Avatar was a visually stunning movie. Director James Cameron actually held off making the movie until the special effects industry caught up with what he envisioned for his film. Avatar is one of the few movies we went to see, the year it was released and it reignited my husbands love of the 3D media.
He started doing research on producing 3D photographs and went back to his old slides and photos. After scanning them, he realigned some of his images and applied the instructions he found on YouTube for producing 3D images in Photoshop.
I know nothing about photography and know just enough about Photoshop to make logos. He's capable of taking photos with a point and shoot camera that are gallery ready, while I still struggle with the idea of what I can and cannot capture through the camera lens. He's explained in detail, what he was doing and how he was doing it, but there are still many things I just don't get.
We ordered some surprisingly cheap 3D glasses from the web, to replace the cardboard ones that had been packed away with his books for over twenty years. And of course, our digital camera decided to act up at this point.
As any photography enthusiasts knows, you can easily spend thousands of dollars on a good digital SLR camera and lenses. But the better point and shoot and bridge camera are easily catching up to DSLR in terms of convenience.
Being an old school photographer, Jim immediately mentioned names like Nikon, Pentax, and Hasselblad. Being the frugal shopper that I am, I went to Amazon and Ebay, started looking through the digital camera sections and juggled back and forth between reviews and auctions. I emailed him a list of five cameras, and links to user reviews. He wasn't happy with any of the brands until he started reading the reviews.
There is a huge difference in the professional and consumer market for digital cameras. Since he wasn't shooting weddings or reproducing artwork for Tiffany, (both of which he's done during his professional career,) our choices of cameras were wider.
Since we were on a strict budget, we replaced our low resolution, older camera with a 7.1 digital point and shoot with high Amazon user rankings from both professionals and amateurs from an eBay auction. I looked through the listings and was lucky enough to pick up the model we wanted for around thirty dollars.
So, not including the computer, scanner or software, which were already in house, we spent a grand total of forty dollars on his 3D fix.
Once the camera arrived, I became a weekend widow for the Spring and early Summer, as Jim was out the door at the crack of dawn (best lighting) to shoot New Jersey landmarks and landscapes. He was very satisfied with the camera and went back to places where he'd shot earlier pictures to replace low resolution images with better ones from the new camera.
And then he decided he wanted a website to display his 3D images. That's when the real battle began.
appreciated
