3D Photography - Can new tech make it more accessible?

Hi All - This is a repost from another forum, but it seems more at home here:

I want to find a way to share and view stereoscopic images online / using a smartphone. I've found 2 ways, one which requires a VR headset, and another which might require some software / coding skills.

Method 1: (conventional)

Displaying two images side by side on a smartphone display, and using a VR headset (playstation VR or google cardboard) to view them in 3D. I have done this. It looks amazing, but it's not very accessible unless you have a headset. If i get some interest i can share a few of my images...

Method 2:

Using software such as "facebook 360" to view 3D effect by tilting the display. This uses depth information from a 3D 'portrait mode' photo and the accelerometer built into your phone to animate the image to appear 3D.

I like this second option because it is much more accessible to the average person, though much harder to pull off. (facebook 3d image sharing it is currently only available for recent iphones as far as i can tell)

As I have only captured 2 photos per scene, I would need a way to get a depth map from the two images, perhaps using a neural network, in order to fill in the missing depth information and get a seamless transition between the 2 images. Alternatively I could take a short video instead of the 2 images.

Here is a video that explains 3D photos on facebook and ios:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmRtB3c3ylI

Any ideas on how this could be done? Perhaps there's a community working on this.

You can use OmniVirt 3D Photo Creator Tool

Looks good. Though it looks geared exclusively toward advertisers and it looks like you need to email the guys for a quote.

I think there are alternatives. I didn't search deeply, I just gave you an example.

It's probably harder to find a simple, one-touch solution.

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Turn your composite images into Facebook 3D images without iPhone

Thanks so much! that link is exactly what I was looking for. I had no illusions it would be a one step process, although I do think there could be in opportunity to automate the process in future given the technology currently available.

Thanks again

Was my pleasure to help!

This might be too retro for what you want to do, but it works.  I have a headband binocular magnifier and found it won't work with traditional stereo cards, BUT if I take a photo of the card with my iPhone and use the headset, it works really well and I don't  see any of the screen pixels.  Because you can see both photos with the magnifier a card placed at the margin between the photos on the phone will help separate the images.

The headband magnifier is about $25 on line but just the lens is about $12.  You can probably find these thing for almost nothing at a garage sale or swap meet.

"can new tech make it more accessible" makes it seem like it was something made 100 years ago before computers. New tech already made it more accessible. if you want to view 3d photos you can:

1) Use a VR headset + 3d gallery app such as pigasus

2) Use a 3D display - those are now quite cheap. I personally have an LG 3d display and an iz3d display but mostly use the LG right now,  and use sView or stereophotomaker

3) view it crosseyed/in parallel just with your eyes

4) use anaglyph/colorcode ( I don't really recommend this option but it's cheap)

I have been thinking about this too as I have always had a problem with showing 3D photos and slides.  I'm also looking into 3D video and that brings up the problem of viewing again.  My thought was to use a small, short range WiFi transmitter that people could log into with their smart phone (everybody has on now) or tablet, with a viewer that fits the device and allows you to see L/R parallel views (just like the stereoscope viewers from the turn of the century).  You would supply the images from your device and the transmitter would allow everyone to see it on their device at the same time.  I think it would work, would not be too expensive and everyone uses their own equipment to see the photos.  Just a thought!

This method can be tricky. The other people's devices must have access at full resolution 3D material, to be properly viewed. So, the photo and video materials must be transferred and stored on intended 3D devices, then viewed with proper players/viewers (or to use online solutions).

If you intend an instant view, this is made with "screen mirroring" method. That means the smartphone will internally decode the videos with the internal video player (by example), will display the image on the phone screen at the phone screen resolution and will send this content to another displays at phone screen resolution, which is usually not enough to display good 3D content. By example 4k video on FHD smartphone screen.

The good quality of high resolution 3D pictures and video will be destroyed.
Except the Sony smartphones with 4k screen resolution, all the rest of smartphones is better to be avoided in case of 3D viewing.

So, 3D enthusiasts need to invest in quality visualization devices in order to be able to see quality 3D materials...

Thank you for your response 3D Gunner.  When I used my iPhone to take a picture of an old 3D stereo card and used my binocular head band magnifier, I could see the 3D effect very well and, since the quality of the original image was OK but not spectacular the quality was acceptable on the phone, but on my computer, because I had to reduce the size so much and screen resolution is 72 DPI it was poor.

My thinking was that you could share 3D images with friends while they looked at them using a folding viewer.  With a proper design, it might be that the viewer could also act as the phone case.  Just seeing some 3D photos might perk their interest in tying it themselves or at least appreciate the realism 3D offers.  The distribution of your images to a group of phones is where I thought some type of short range WiFi transmitter would be helpful.

I included the slide I used.  Although the image has TIFF printed on it, it is actually a JPG.  I was doing a test to see if there was any real difference between and TIFF download and a TIFF or JPG print.  There was no appreciable difference.  The image below was from a print set for 300dpi off an Epson R2000 photo printer.  It is a photo of the Spanish Gate in St. Augustine, Florida.  Copyright was 1905, I think it has expired.

Did you know that the Library of Congress has a collection of stereographs and most of them can be downloaded?  How cool is that!

Brian F Flint wrote:

I am not convinced that it is necessary to have a smartphone with a 4K resolution to get reasonable results using this method of viewing. I also own a Sony smartphone with 4K resolution.

So, you can upload a high resolution 3D image in both your phones and will see the difference, especially with a VR device for smartphones, which will give you an expanded FOV.

I don't have a 4K phone, just an iPhone SE.  It has a 4.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen and has 1334-by-750-pixel resolution at 326 ppi.  The print of the stereograph was done at 300 dpi.  With my magnifying viewer, I did not see any pixels.

Showing these type of images to friends and family in a group setting would be satisfactory since the big draw is seeing 3D.  I'm not saying higher resolution isn't better but we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the, "hey, this is cool!"  Even when using a Stereo Realist camera with slide film, the field of view is wide and high resolution was not an issue.  Looking at an image my dad took of someone welding , seeing the sparks flying toward you was the "Wow" factor.

Brian I appreciate you taking the time to download the photo and evaluating it.  3D Gunner I appreciate your input also, you are very knowledgeable about 3D and are willing to help people.

Thanks!

Better quality means more "wow".

Thanks for the tip. I guess what I most want to see is more accessible 3D without extra equipment. Until we can find an easy (low friction) way of viewing 3D content that uses available technology it will remain a niche interest.

Maybe I'll take a look at the LOC online library.

I should have included this in an earlier post, but here is the link to the Library of Congress stereo images - https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/stereo/viewing3d.html

I was introduced to the practice of “free viewing” 3D image pairs in 1947 by my grandfather who convinced me that the hand-held Holmes viewer really wasn’t necessary. I’m still using free viewing 74 years later- not a bad record for using the same “technology”, eh?

Dave

I haven’t forgotten about this topic and have been looking into a few things. Here is the solution I came up with that is comparable to viewing old stereo pairs with an Underwood hand held unit, which I have used to make the comparison. I’m now using an Owl VR designed by Brian May (member of the band Queen), here is a web page to see what it looks like - (https://www.berezin.com/3d/owl_vr.htm) I was able to download a bunch of stereo pairs from the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/stereo/) in jpg or tiff and put them on my iPhone SE and an old iPad Air. Viewing on the phone was OK but the horizontal screen is just a bit narrow (4.2 inches) and, while I could get good stereo effect and no pixilation, I did start to get eye strain after a few minutes of viewing. Then I tried the iPad and it worked much better because the image is almost 6 inches wide and the original card is only 7, so it’s pretty close.

Here is my procedure. I transfer the photos from my desktop to the iPad, I used an app called Any Trans. I then moved all the photos (40 of them) to their own folder. Turn the iPad vertically and lock the screen, this automatically keeps the images at the right size . Open the Photos app on your device and the folder you made for your 3D images. On my old iPad Air (from 2013, using iOS 12.5.5) when I open the folder I see thumbnails of all the photos. In the upper right hand corner is “Slideshow”, tap on that. The first slide should come up and the background will go black so you don’t have a bright screen looking back at you. Touch the screen once and it will stop with an “Options” button in the lower right corner, tap that. I set the “Theme” to Dissolve (it gives a neat effect in 3D), select your music or turn it off, I left “Repeat” off and set the speed about 2/3 toward the rabbit but this can be adjusted later on of course. Tap the screen again and the menu disappears, tap the triangle at the bottom of the page and the program will start. Tap again and the program will pause. I thinks it is so neat that you can have a folder of 3D photos and it will play on it’s own, which makes the whole process of viewing easier. I checked the iPhone and I can get it to work also, but the actual procedure is a little different.

What I need to do now is find a way to secure the Own VR viewer to the iPad so I don’t have to hold it in place the entire time. Right now I’m using two 3 1/2x1/4” rubber bands (one across the top and one on the bottom) and it works well enough for now. Once in place I could hold the iPad with one hand and use the touch screen below the viewer to swipe the images forward or back which made navigation much easier. The resolution of my iPad is OK (those old stereo photographs were not that sharp anyway), but the view would be much better on a newer device, and new digital stereo’s from a good camera would be great. Also, I did try viewing the images on the iPad horizontally and there was some size changes that made some of them large enough that it was impossible to align with your eyes. If you edited the images you could get them as big as a normal stereo pair, but with what I had, it would be a lot of work, but it can be done.

Sorry this is so long but I hope it helps.

I have shown a few friends the 3D Slideshow of the old Saint Augustine images using Apples Photo software and putting the images in an Album.  It is here that you can start the Slideshow function so the stereo pair photos will change automatically.  You can even add some music to your presentation but the selection is limited.  They enjoy seeing the 3D images but you can't read any of the notations on the stereo slides so I have to narrate what they are seeing.

Does anybody know if there is a way to add a narration track and have the Slideshow change to the next photo when the narration ends on the photo you are looking at?

Or, is there a way to make a presentation in Power Point and run it on an Apple iPhone or iPad?  I seem to remember Apple blocking  certain Micro Soft products from running on Apples mobile devices.