Stereo!

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is to make stereo pictures. There were a couple of things that held me back, though. First, I figured I would have to build a special tripod that would hold the camera in two positions. I would take a picture in one position, swivel the camera to the other position and take the second picture. I'm still waiting for that Ronco "round-2-it" to arrive, though, so I haven't built the special tripod yet. Second, unless the pictures are made so small that you can't see any detail (or unless you are a hammerhead shark, with eyeballs that are really far apart), you need a special viewer to view them.

A couple of days ago, I ran across a web site that had some stereo pictures. They were of landscapes and they showed the kind of depth I've wanted to show in some of my pictures. The guy took them with a single camera, no tripod. He just took a picture, stepped sideways, and took another. They are viewed using the "crossed eyes" method. Instead of trying to point your eyes at infinity like you do with those hidden picture things, you cross your eyes so that you are looking at the left image with your right eye and the right image with your left. That way you aren't limited by how far apart your eyeballs are. You see three images and the middle one is the stereo image.

You might remember the following picture from Sunday's ride/hike. It's one of those cases where I knew it would look uninteresting because it couldn't show the 3-dimensionality of the scene.

From 2009_02_01

I took a couple of other pictures of the same scene and have combined them for a 3D picture. I think it worked pretty good for my first attempt. I need to make some refinements in my technique, but this works pretty good for showing depth in a scene. Click on the picture for a larger version.

 

I need to go try this with some mountains now. I may have to take a big step between pictures.