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Grand Canyon from the South Rim in Winter 1A (Left halves - gc01Aii / gc01Ax) |
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Grand Canyon from the South Rim in Winter 1B (Right halves - gc01Bii / gc01Bx)
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HOW THEY'RE TAKEN Since the early 1970s, I'd been taking three-dimensional (3-D) stereo slides--not with a 3-D camera, but with various standard single-lens-reflex (SLR) 35mm cameras. To do this, I first took a photo looking through the viewfinder with one eye, putting a point of a framing mark (or a dirt spot on the prism!) on some object in the distance. After the film was advanced, I moved the viewfinder to the other eye while keeping my head stationary, aligned the mark on the same object in the distance, and took the second photo. This process has been made easier since the introduction of auto-wind cameras.
HOW THEY'RE VIEWED After processing the slides, I place the left of the pair of slides into an old Gitzo dual slide viewer for the 3-D effect. This viewer was made by the Gitzo tripod company in Europe, but was discontinued many years ago. It has two single slide viewers mounted on a plastic rail (with thumb screws) and adjustable oculars for focusing. You can get the same effect by purchasing two small individual slide viewers (the kind you hold up to the light to see the slides) and holding them together for viewing with both eyes. (I also experimented with gluing them together, finding I needed to place something under the joint before gluing so that they were slightly angled inward when held up to the light.) If you want to build your own 3-D slide viewer, check out the Let's Build a Stereoscope at the Fun Science Gallery Website. It even shows a novel way of using those two individual slide viewers.
ADVANTAGES WITH THIS METHOD By using standard cameras with standard film, even if you don't get a good stereo view for some reason, you still have decent standard 35mm slides from which photos can be made. You also do not need a special camera, nor special processing, nor special slide mounts, nor an expensive stereo slide viewer.
PROBLEMS WITH THIS METHOD If there is anything moving, say foliage from the wind, or people walking, or vehicles traveling, those items will be displaced in the photos and will look like ghosts when viewed with both eyes. On the other hand, the appearance of water movement may be just what the photographer ordered!
HINTS FOR USING THIS METHOD First of all, you will be amazed at some of the 3-D photos you will create. You will find, however, that there are some tricks you will need to utilize to optimize your success:
- Move the camera in the direction that clouds are moving. In other words, if the clouds are blowing from left to right, take the first photo with the left eye, then the second with the right. Otherwise, the clouds will look as if they are projecting through the background at you.
- Frame your photos differently than for single photos. In this case, you WANT those distracting things in the foreground and to the sides framing your photos--those are what give you the most depth in your views!
- For better depth of field, and to keep one eye on that important object in the distance, keep the camera to the same eye, take a wide stance with slightly bent knees, shift to one side and take the first photo, then shift to the other side to take the other photo, keeping the camera level. This extends your interpupilary distance (the distance between the pupils of your eyes) from about 2-1/2 inches to 12 inches or more; it's sort of like the depth you perceive with binoculars that are much wider in the front than at the eyepieces. Be certain with this method, however, that there isn't something in the very near foreground.
- For greater effect where you have nothing in the foreground, at the edge of a canyon for instance, you can take one photo, walk several feet, and take the other photo, extending your interpupilary distance much, much farther! With this view, even the farthest mountain ranges appear to be in full 3-D relief!
- And now for the real kicker: Take your photos from a helicopter or light plane, and the results are truly amazing, as you increase your interpupilary distance to yards.
- But wait, there's more! I have some unbelievable 3-D slides taken from the windows of jet aircraft. My 3-D slides of the Grand Canyon taken from a Continental jet, Mount Rainier from a United Jet, and the Aleutian Islands from a Singapore jet are simply incredible. The relief is so fantastic, each view looks as if you are peering down into or out over an exaggerated-relief model laid out on a humongous table.
THE DRAWBACKS OF 3-D PHOTOGRAPHY First of all, there's the expense! You'll find yourself taking several photos of the same scene where you might take only one snapshot with conventional photography. Although you do get to select the best of several photos, should you want to make prints to show or put in an album, prints from slides are considerably more expensive than prints made during the original processing or even as copies from negatives. Remember, also, that each 3-D photo takes twice as much film, so the cost of film is doubled. On top of that, if it takes ten seconds to show someone each of your prints, it will take many times more than that to show each of your 3-D views . . . not only do you have to put the slides into the viewers, take them out and file them before selecting another set, and file the previous set, but each person who views your scene will want to take up to several minutes to ooh and aah and babble about the effect you've produced. This means that you'll have to select only the best of a large group of 3-D views to show your friends and relatives--a bummer when you put all that effort and money into taking all those slides!
WHAT ABOUT STEREOSCOPES? A stereoscope (not to be confused with the stereopticon that used glass slides) is that hand-held device your grandparents used in order to view 3-D stereo photos mounted on cardboard, called stereographs. You can still find these viewers and photo cards in antique shops around the world. On the other hand, you, too, can make your own stereographs. Note that the views I've shown above mention that they are two halves of the same view--those are prints that I mounted on cardboard. What I've done is to taken a 3-1/2x5 print from each of a set of two 3-D slides, sliced them in half, and mounted them on a piece of stiff cardboard cut to size. (For my cross-eye views, I just used a software program to cut and paste the left side to the right.) For some views, you might take only the center of the photo. I purchased a stereoscope viewer on eBay and can now leave a stack of 3-D pictures on a table with a viewer for folks to view at their leisure.
WANT MORE INFORMATION? Rather than supply several pages of links here, I suggest that you use your favorite Internet search engine to locate Websites that feature information on 3-D. Searching for related words, such as 3D, 3-D, stereoscope, stereoscopic, stereograph, stereographs, stereopticon, stereogram, stereophone, magic lantern, and anaglyph, should give you hundreds of links. On the other hand, you might start your search by going to the 3-D Links page at the View-Master Website.
Cheers!
Dick Oakes