3D photography tests + Active Shutter & Passive Display techniques

So I couldn't wait to get started and make some 3D images. I decided to jump right in and do a bit of hands-on research even though I'm yet to build my rig, or source 2 identical cameras to shoot with.

The basics I operated from:
- A stereoscopic image is composed of two images of the same scene, captured with a small distance in position along the same axis.
- All the settings must be the same (Focus, exposure, shutter speed, etc)

I only had one camera available at this stage so there were some other things I had to operate by:
- The scene had to remain unchanged
- At this early stage of stereoscopic learning, the camera angle (or convergence) should stay the same.

So here is how I did it:

I didn't have a dolly on hand so I found a flannel and slid it to the left on the second capture.

I edited the two photos together in Photoshop and saved it as the JPS file format.

Blogger doesn't allow embedding of JPS files, but this is what it looks like as a side-by-side stereoscopic file.

I have a 3D monitor wnd NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses, so this shows the left eye...

And the right one.

This is just a video demonstration of the above images.

So this 'no-budget' test was very successful. This was also the second attempt. On the first go round I did not take proper care to keep the camera aligned, so the 3D effect was thrown off.

If you have a means of viewing 3D images here is the file for you to download and see for yourself: This is the link.

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Stereoscopic 3D display Technologies

The display technique shown here to display my work is using active shutter technology. For this to work, the screen has a refresh rate of 120hz and the glasses sync with this, blocking the lenses asynchronously so that the left eye sees the left image and the right eye sees the right image one after the other. This happens so fast that we (usually) don't notice any flicker or ghosting.

An alternative display technique to this (and one that most cinemas employ for their 3D projection) is passive 3D which makes use of horizontally and vertically polarized lenses. The images are projected with matching polarisations onto the same screen or surface at the same time, with each eye seeing the intended image through the polarised filters on the lenses of the glasses.