3D still camera | |||||||||||||||||
In the 50's, my father had an excellent 3D camera. It had two apertures: the distance between them was the same as the distance between an adult's two eyes. Press the shutter release, and two images were captured on film, slightly different like your two eyes see slightly different views. The photos were turned into slides, each with two images. You looked at them with a viewer, and the 3D effect was perfect. This would be extremely easy to replicate with digital technology. The camera would have two apertures and take two pictures at once, like my father's old camera. The camera itself would be the viewer: a couple LCDs on the back would display the two images. Some optics might be required. It should also be possible to use software to render the photo into overlaid images viewable on a conventional PC, using glasses that sync with alternating images, or whatever technique they are using to get 3D on PCs these days. I want this product! I just came back from a vacation hiking around 1000-year-old pyramids in Mexico, and the flat 2D photos simply do not convey those amazing sites. Please create this camera! - Hoytster
hoytster, Mar 07 2006
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Fantastic idea - I used to have such a two-lense camera and it was great.I wonder if it is possible to invent a lense attachment that effectively has two lenses out front that connect to the existing single lense. The attachment splits the picture into the two halves and rotates them through 90 degrees. With high resolution digital photography this should still produce excellent results - the two halves would be on top of each other so the viewer would mimic this
Buy a pair of cheap digital cameras, attach them together with some inexpensive pressure-sensitive adhesive material (duct tape), synchronize the "shutter releases" to go off at the same time.I've done this with cheap disposable film cameras with reasonably acceptable results, the trick is to synchronize the shutters (not so easy) and to minimize camera shake (tripod).
I wonder if the appropriate software would be able to render a 3D scene from the information provided. I think there are existing cameras which make use of a depth layer (a "delta" layer, like transparency alpha?) using rangefinding optics to provide an alternative to chroma-key/green-screen (removing that portion of an image determined to be beyond a certain distance). Such tech could be applied here.
There are several low-quality products that solve this need, as well as a couple professional-level products. The "prosumer" market is underserved.