Does anyone have any experience with stereo photography?

[orionid]

So, after soosh posted the link to the Loreo page in the pinhole camera thread, curiosity got the best of me and I spent a fair amount of money there (though not really compared to the cost of real lenses) on some new toys.

Including this one:
http://www.loreo.com/pages/products/loreo_3dcap.html

Does anyone have any experience with this, or anything similar? I imagine I’m going to be playing with it quite a bit once it arrives, but other than novelty keepsakes, are there any practical applications?

[andyofne]

I saw some in the Navy, but I’ll have to kill you if I tell you about it.

[orionid]

I saw some in the Navy, but I’ll have to kill you if I tell you about it.

That’s okay…. We probably have the sonar recordings of you taking those photos…. Or biologic signatures, depending where and how deep we were.

/Bubblehead

[kibblesnbits]

other than novelty keepsakes, are there any practical applications?

Does if count if your family is still looking at them, and talking about you, over 100 years later? That novelty factor can go a long way.

My great grandfather had a stereo camera in the late 1800’s and he made the family vacation photos a lot more interesting:

Things like seeing my long gone grandpa as a boy, in stereo, has a pretty high cool factor. These are unretouched scans except for sizing, so he’s kinda hard to see here, sitting between a couple of the family nuns:

[Schnappi]

Their sample pictures are very hard to focus on.
kibblesnbits old ones focus very easily. I wonder what the difference is.

[kibblesnbits]

ignore this one

[kibblesnbits]

Their sample pictures are very hard to focus on.
kibblesnbits old ones focus very easily. I wonder what the difference is.

I’d guess it’s lens quality. That camera had zeiss lenses that were surprisingly small. My mother still has at least one of the them and she showed it to me years ago. It’s probably about 1″ across.

It also could be due just to the nature of cameras as well as the film/plates of the era. For instance, I doubt depth of field could be controlled much, if at all, but I could be wrong.

These were taken in Belgium, in the 1880’s I think. So if this gadget isn’t doing as good a job as a technology THAT old, I’d look into alternatives.

[orionid]

Well, I got my stereo lens the other day, and started playing around with it. My immediate reaction was mild disapointment in its nearly all-plastic construction. I still had high hopes though and ran outside to play. The focus slider is hard to get a feel for, and I had to use all manual settings, since the Nikon D50 I had it attached to still wants lens feedback in arperature priority mode. But, once I started getting a hang of it, it turned out to be a fun little gadget. I definately found the photos with textured foreground and background to be more visually appealing, as it emphasizes the 3d effect.

Here’s some samples from around my parents’ farm.

And my personal favorite, the saw mill:

also, since my father is nearly blind in one eye, and has never seen anything 3d in his life (including real vision), I did a little playing with a flicker effect to let his brain fill in the gaps, rather than each eye taking one image. You should have seen the smile on his face when he saw this.

http://www.buckscorner.com/farktography/3d/dogtest.swf

[orionid]

My great grandfather had a stereo camera in the late 1800’s and he made the family vacation photos a lot more interesting:

Those are actually quite awesome. I remember the lady across the street when I was a kid had a collection of national geographic stereo photos from the 1800’s or early 1900’s and the memory of those was the deciding factor in buying the loreo lens. I’m just hoping to find something to do with it other than just having fun. I think the depth of field in your great grandfathers probably came from a small aperature and longer exposure times, but it’s hard to tell specifically from looking at them.

[kibblesnbits]

Orionid, that swf is great, what a wonderful idea! waving the back more than the front really does make it look 3d from one eye. Extra points for the beagle since my girl is half beagle. Free viewing the ones you took, they’re pretty good to me. The barbed wire on the grazing one though, it’s not matching up for me, but the steer looks quite happy and properly 3D. I’m sure you’ll have a blast with it as you learn more about it.

I have a very good friend who collects stereographs with a special interest in world’s fairs, from the really old ones like mine up to viewmaster. There’s a lot of real good stuff still out there. Most are not real expensive and might be worth checking out, maybe you can even find some of the ones you remember as a kid.

The really best part about mine is I actually have names for most everyone in those old stereos, how I’m related, some background, etc. For instance, those nuns with my young grandpa. One nun was my grandfather’s aunt. The other nun was her friend, and chaperone since he was a male. Yeah, they were pretty uptight about that kind of thing in those old convents.

But many years later he met the chaperone’s niece and she became my grandma. Whether they met through the nuns, I don’t know, but it’s still a great story to go with the photo.

So keep taking those pics and keep track of who and what they are about. Down the line someone will really appreciate it.

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