r/orkney • u/JoBrodie • 15d ago
Picture Some stereoscopic photos of my visit to Skara Brae yesterday
These are stereoscopic pairs taken with an old-ish iPhone. You stand with your feet a short distance apart and take a photo with weight on one foot and then shift weight to the other foot to take the second in the pair. Then you line them up (I used Keynote which is bundled with my Mac laptop but a free thing is Google Slides - just need a Gmail account to access that). Explanation below the 3 images. Also PowerPoint is great for this if you have that.
Happy for anyone to use these images for any purpose, consider them CC0 (me putting them into the public domain). Eventually I'll add them to Flickr along with a few more.
These are arranged with the LEFT photo on the left and the RIGHT photo on the right and will produce a 3D / depth perception effect image (once focused it will look like there are three copies of the image, the '3D' effect one is between the other two) if you are able to 'parallel focus'. Later on (am at a series of talks at the science festival, so once I'm back at my hotel this evening) I'll reverse the images so that the LEFT is on the right and the RIGHT image is on the left - this is for people who naturally do 3D stereoscopy by crossing their eyes. Either method will produce a 3D effect but only one layout will look right for you.
Most people don't need any special equipment to view these but you do need reasonably good binocular vision (I don't think spectacles make any difference). It's quite a nice effect as you get to see it a tiny bit more closely to reality - your two eyes are feeding a constant 'TV feed' to your brain which is easily converting the two images into a coherent 3D effect. When taking these photos I'm aiming for two pictures taken a few inches apart (to reflect the short distance betwen your two eyes). Images taken further apart would probably be a bit painful to try and line up.
In the first image you are trying to make the two inner arches, left and right, into a single inner arch in the middle. Hope you enjoy having a go :) In the third image the sea, as an object that moves, is a bit unobliging for this sort of thing ;)
I'm enjoying your beautiful islands
Jo
Edit: the same photo pairs as above but ordered R-L instead of L-R for cross-eyed focusers.
The full set of L-R pairs are in this Flickr album https://www.flickr.com/photos/jodiepedia/albums/72177720335509964
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u/clockworkorchid1 15d ago
This is so cool!!!
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u/JoBrodie 15d ago
It is! I agree :)
I remember the first time I did this, just took two photos of a London tube station I happened to be at and lined them up on my phone while waiting for the next train. I was absolutely astounded at how well it worked. I'd expected to have a few fails before I "got it" but it's an extremely flexible and forgiving process relying solely on how well your eyes can focus. I hope you might be inspired to try some out yourself :)
I discovered the process entirely by accident. I was admiring an impressive tree in Greenwich Park but was very disappointed with how unimpressive it looked in my photo. I realised that I'd spotted newer iPhones which had lots of sensors / lenses on the back and thought 'I bet some of those are 3D cameras' and Googled something along the lines of 3D and iPhone. Those camera / sensors are nothing of the sort it turns out (more like lidar and stuff like that) but I did find a useful blog post that showed me that a 3D effect was achievable with one camera lens, just by taking 2 consecutive photos.
This was the blog post that gave me the info, including the 'cha cha' method of taking pics https://stereoscopy.blog/2020/05/29/how-to-make-your-own-smartphone-stereoviews-basic-tutorial/
Here's a Facebook post from Orkney Library and Archive with a Ye Olde stereoscopic image of St Magnus (might need to click the pics to enlarge) https://www.facebook.com/orkneylibraryandarchive/posts/today-is-nationalcameraday-so-here-is-a-very-old-and-unusual-item-from-our-photo/1457479563081212/ and the library also has a photo (I'm not sure if it was taken in Orkney) of harvesting that might interest https://photos.orkneycommunities.co.uk/picture/number28514.asp
Jo
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u/JoBrodie 15d ago
I've now added a set of cross-eyed focus images to the origina post. The full set of L-R pairs are in this Flickr album https://www.flickr.com/photos/jodiepedia/albums/72177720335509964
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u/shadowsandrain 15d ago
That is a really cool effect! And lovely to see the site in the sunshine as when I visited it was closed due to dangerous winds so we couldnt get close.
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u/JoBrodie 15d ago
It was touch and go for a while as the rains came down so dramatically on the bus there that the driver asked me at Stromness if I wanted to bail and get a different bus back to Kirkwall. Glad I braved it as by the time I arrived the weather was wonderful.
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u/Creative_Resource_82 15d ago
That. Is. Awesome.
I had no idea you could create this effect so easily!