Nagasaki in 3D
Category: Stereoscopy
01/21/2007
And for the first time, here is a post that is not directly related to Japan. Stereoscopy is a technique used to recreate a 3D effect from plain, 2D pictures. Although the effect is striking, the principle that lies behind is extrememy simple: it's based upon the fact that our eyes see different images, which are computed by our brain to create a 3d representation. Similarly, stereoscopy consists in taking two pictures instead of one, one for the right eye and one for the left eye. Then it's all about how to have each eye see its targeted image...I'm not going into further details about the techniques, vocabulary and stuff, I'll leave it to you to refer to dedicated websites to learn about that. A good start would be to check out the wikipedia article, and then browse the web for stereoscopy-related websites.
So what's the relation with my blog? Well during my last trips, I took a couple of stereo pictures...They're not of the best quality because I made them manually. Ideally one should use a tripod for better picture synchronization or even better, a dedicated double-lens camera (which are not really produced anymore, unfortunately). However some of them are really nice! The landscape pics are not very good, I still need to increase the interaxial distance (hyper-stereoscopy), but I'm gonna improve!
I strongly recommend you give it a try! With a little practice, it actually becomes easy to see 3D almost instantly and without any gimmick. For each couple of pics, you can find the "cross-eye" version and the "parallel" version. Everyone has his own preference, although parallel viewing is generally much harder to achieve (but provides a better result).
Here are the pics:
Nagasaki 1 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 2 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 3 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 4 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 5 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 6 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 7 : cross-eye - parallel
Nagasaki 8 : cross-eye - parallel
Also, I significantly reduced the image size, but I can send the original pics for a better effect, just ask me.
Now it's up to you! If you really try hard but can't manage to see the pics, I can give you some pointers.
I'll put more stereograms online every now and then...
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