How to easily take 3D photos with any camera

First we must understand the nature of a 3 Dimensional moment in time. The reason that we judge and appreciate depth is that we have two planar, 2 Dimensional references at any given time… our two eyes. By adjusting the angle of each eye, we can focus on objects at any arbitrary distance, throwing objects at other distances out of focus. This contrast between focus and blur, along with an inner knowledge of how our eyes are aligned and the distance between them, gives us the ability to estimate the distance to objects.

So if we capture two images from a scene at proper angles, we can then view the scene later in three dimensions. This denotes a stereo pair.

So let’s take your camera/smartphone and look for a quiet subject to capture. Knowledge of depth by our brain it’s supposed to be received simultaneously by our two eyes, and brain can’t decode correctly images projected on both eyes from different moments of time, so be sure nothing moves in scene between first and second photo.

Make the first photo and after this first photo carefully move horizontally your camera to right a few inches avoiding vertical displacement (if there’s something close make less horizontal displacement than if nothing is near camera). Avoid vertical displacements (look lower border and try to be at same level when taking the second photo) .

For the moment you can put your images together like the above image on a single .jpg file with 3DSteroid or StereoPhotoMaker (or manually with any photo editor). Use the Auto-align feature of StereoPhotoMaker or 3DSteroid Pro to avoid incorrect alignment between images (and other mistakes), without this step a lot of good 3D photos will look not so good even if the information to make the 3D picture is there, it only need correct alignment. Now you can open this standard .jpg image on your 3DTV or 3D device (or mobile device with Cardboard) and activate 3D.

A perfect 3D image is seen instantly. If you can’t see instantly and clearly in 3D maybe happened some of this cases:

• Inverted images (you moved to left instead right, you have to edit the stereo pair and invert position of images).
• Upper and/or lower borders doesn’t match or did photos with very different orientations (you have to align images with 3DSteroid or StereoPhotoMaker to things match same height on both images)
• Too much separation between shots when there are something near the camera, or to few separation when capturing subjects very far from camera. (some can be corrected aligning horizontally images -or crop image- with the above software, but not always. Don’t worry, everybody have to deal with this, more important of this is to learn which distances are appropiate on every situation).
• Something moved between taking first and second photo (a shadow, the wind moving plants, water, lights, a person or a car in the rear…)

On next tutorials you will know how to perfectly align images to avoid defects and using automated Apps to do the process automatically. and learn about different 3D file formats.

Make your own testing and ask us if you need.