Making Cross-Eyed 3D with One Camera

I have experimented with one DSLR by moving the camera the distance of my eyes using the Stack Shot mechanism. I have tried with the camera orientation unchanged and with a pan to keep the central object in the center. I then composite the two images in Photoshop side by side. I am not happy with the results. Can someone explain how this should be done?

Here are a couple of references on 3D and the cha cha method of taking stereo images.

A Beginner’s Guide to Shooting Stereoscopic 3D | News

Shifty methods for taking stereo 3-d pictures.

Stereo Base Mathematics

Instead of messing around with Photoshop make your life easy and use the free StereoPhoto Maker program. It will allow you to select the two images, align them, and produce a r/l or cross eyed JPG.

StereoPhoto Maker (English)

Sailor Blue wrote:

Here are a couple of references on 3D and the cha cha method of taking stereo images.

A Beginner’s Guide to Shooting Stereoscopic 3D | News

Shifty methods for taking stereo 3-d pictures.

Stereo Base Mathematics

Instead of messing around with Photoshop make your life easy and use the free StereoPhoto Maker program. It will allow you to select the two images, align them, and produce a r/l or cross eyed JPG.

StereoPhoto Maker (English)

Thank you very much for the links. I have stored them as favorites and downloaded StereoPhoto Maker. Today I will try the software with a couple of my stereo experiments.

threed123 wrote:

Don't pan.hold the camera straight out from your face. In other words do not try to keep the main object in one place on your lcd screen.

Camera was mounted on a slide (PhotoStacker mechanism) and between shots moved the distance of my eyes. I tried with no panning and with panning to keep a central object at the same point in the image.

Initially my evaluation was using cross eyed viewing after positioning side by side in Photoshop. Neither panning or not helped the poor stereo effect.

After downloading StereoPhoto Maker and using the auto alignment, the side by side still looks bad. However, the Anaglyph view looks much better. I just cannot get the cross eyed (cha cha?) view to look good. I will keep fooling with the software to see what I can get.

digital ed wrote:

threed123 wrote:

Don't pan.hold the camera straight out from your face. In other words do not try to keep the main object in one place on your lcd screen.

Camera was mounted on a slide (PhotoStacker mechanism) and between shots moved the distance of my eyes. I tried with no panning and with panning to keep a central object at the same point in the image.

Initially my evaluation was using cross eyed viewing after positioning side by side in Photoshop. Neither panning or not helped the poor stereo effect.

After downloading StereoPhoto Maker and using the auto alignment, the side by side still looks bad. However, the Anaglyph view looks much better. I just cannot get the cross eyed (cha cha?) view to look good. I will keep fooling with the software to see what I can get.

OK, I think I have got it now. Using the StereoPhoto Maker and Auto Adjustment and then saving the images as a TIFF the cross eyed viewing looks better. Still do not fully understand the program but that will take time.

I bought a cheap slide and took off the screw drive so it would slide freely and quickly when the brake was released. A simple Bulldog clip controls how far the slide moves and is easy and quick to adjust for normal or hyper stereo. The slide is the same as this one.

Amazon.com : Neewer® Two-way 4"/10cm Macro Shot Focusing Focus Rail Slider for Flash Canon Nikon Sony DSLR Camera 1/4" Screw Quick Release Mount : Camera & Photo

I mounted a Stroboframe 300-115 Vertaflip on the slide then my Canon 7D camera on the Vertaflip. This lets me shoot cha cha 3D in either landscape or portrait mode.

Amazon.com: Stroboframe 300-115 Vertaflip PHD Camera Platform (Black): Camera & Photo

With StereoPhoto Maker I save the 3D images as cross eyed JPGs for no-glasses viewing. The free FastStone Image Viewer works well for displaying the cross eyed image pairs.

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

I save them to my smart phone as left/right stereo pairs and place the phone in an old stereo viewer. There is a cheap cardboard stereo viewer available.

Google Cardboard: the Best Wearable You're Not Wearing | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

This one from Fuji would be a lot more durable than cardboard, and is very reasonably priced.

Amazon.com : 3D Folding Viewer for Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 3D pictures : Handheld Multimedia Photo Viewers : Camera & Photo

Thanks for the information Sailor. I am in the process of learning and have been using FSViewer to evaluate my end results. So far I have found how to use the StereoPhoto Maker software and am experimenting.

I am using a Nikon D810 camera with the Sigma 50mm Art lens on a tripod with the PhotoStacker carriage to move between stereo shots. Haven't done any hand held yet.

threed123 wrote:

Can you post a result? And/or the two separate images so I/we can see what you mean?

Saving as a tif or jpg should not make a difference. If the subject is beyond 15 feet you won't see much depth in a small crosseyed image anyway. Better to make it anaglyph and bigger to get more depth. Also for cha cha, avoid wide angle less than 28mm as that pushes the objects back too much. Also avoid zoom in unless you widen the separation of the camera between shots. 35mm-50mm is considered about 1:1 for normal eye separation. Crosseyed images versus free image are two different viewing processes and crosseyed makes the objects look smaller because your brain is thinking you are looking at something up close. To free-view the two separate images, you have to keep them small so the objects are no more than 2.5" apart. Anaglyph allows your eyes to free-view normally and you can make the image as big as your monitor without causing eye strain (usually--make sure the most distant objects are equal or less than the separation of your eyes--typically 2.5"). Here are two examples from a Fuji W3. The three image view allows you to view crosseyed and free-eyes straight, but notice how small the objects look and compressed depth. The anaglyph really pops the ducks out of the window. These were made from an MPO file straight out of the camera. I could have aligned and made the popout even more pronounced of course. With anaglyph, the less red in the scene the better.

Two on the left are for free viewing. Two on right are crosseyed viewing.

Anaglyph.

Thanks threed123, actually my stereo photos are looking ok now. Also, the images in your post look very good. For the ducks photo, is that done with exaggerated stereo? I ask because it looks like the ducks extend beyond the surface of the image towards the viewer.

First, please correct me if I am wrong.

When our eyes focus on a close object I believe their focus converges on the object. This would be the same as if when taking a stereo image of a close object the object is centered in the first photo and when the camera is moved to the second photo the object is re-centered by panning the camera. Would keeping the object centered in both left and right photos correct for the mis-centering of the resulting images? I can do this with a DSLR and you might not be able to do this with a fixed duo-lens stereo camera.

digital ed wrote:

First, please correct me if I am wrong.

When our eyes focus on a close object I believe their focus converges on the object. This would be the same as if when taking a stereo image of a close object the object is centered in the first photo and when the camera is moved to the second photo the object is re-centered by panning the camera. Would keeping the object centered in both left and right photos correct for the mis-centering of the resulting images? I can do this with a DSLR and you might not be able to do this with a fixed duo-lens stereo camera.

Here are two of my side-by-side images. Please ignore the subject, they were just quick tests in my garage.

The first is with no panning. The second is with panning to keep the red portion of the drill centered for both left and right photos.

No Panning

With panning to keep object centered

No image processing done from RAW 36MP images except down sizing and converting to jpg. The uploaded files are in AdobeRGB so the color profile does not match the DPR use of sRGB so colors looked washed out.

threed123 wrote:

digital ed wrote:

Here are two of my side-by-side images. Please ignore the subject, they were just quick tests in my garage.

The first is with no panning. The second is with panning to keep the red portion of the drill
"There is a little of not done yet in all of us."
John Madden, football coach

While the images can be viewed okay since the near and far objects are not too far apart, did you notice that when viewed as large as possible that the first pair have more depth, because the panning on the second pair is causing the merge plane to compress?

Did not notice that but will look more closely.

threed123 wrote:

digital ed wrote:

First, please correct me if I am wrong.

When our eyes focus on a close object I believe their focus converges on the object. This would be the same as if when taking a stereo image of a close object the object is centered in the first photo and when the camera is moved to the second photo the object is re-centered by panning the camera. Would keeping the object centered in both left and right photos correct for the mis-centering of the resulting images? I can do this with a DSLR and you might not be able to do this with a fixed lens stereo camera.

One problem with panning is perspective warp of the lens when pointing the camera at the object. However, that can be somewhat fixed through alignment in Stereomaker. Another issue is that the lens will "see" more of the view when pointed left or right, than straight on causing some distortion and need for cropping. Certainly not recommended for objects beyond 3 feet. Another issue with panning is that it places objects beyond the main object in the wrong viewing plane. When our eyes focus on near objects, the objects beyond that object are ignored. But in an image that has a long depth of field, the objects in the background are not ignored and will appear crossed over the center viewing plane. For macro, though, it might work and possibly give a more rounded effect to the object, and it would place the object at the stereo window. BUT, you must make sure objects beyond the focused object are not visible. Best way to explain this is to draw two camera lenses on paper spaced eye length apart. Drawing lines straight out will show you that the lines never cross. Therefore, when viewing the objects, our eyes will force the closer objects to converge and the further objects less so giving correct depth. But now draw two camera lens focused on a near object centered. Note that the lines of sight cross at the object into the wrong camera plane for each eye for distant objects. Our eyes when focused on far objects must not cross the center plane, and for each object inbetween the same is true. Does that make sense?

Yes, that does make sense. Thank you for the explanation. Very interesting how different the camera "processes" the image compared to our eyes.