JAW's Stereoscopic Photographs

Yours eyes work together as a team with your brain to see depth. Monitors, like the one you are looking at, can't show depth...or can they?

If you have two photos side by side, one taken as if it was looking out of your right eye, one ever so slightly to the left, as if it was looking out of your left eye, this is the same thing as what your eyes would see. If only you could feed the one picture into your right eye and the other picture into your left eye you should be able to "trick" your brain into resolving depth. Well you can!

Get your head pretty close to the monitor, about 50cm. Go cross eyed. If you think you can't go cross eyed, put your finger in front of your nose, focus on it, bring your finger in. You are now cross eyed. If you can take your finger away and keep your eyes in the same position that is!

When you are cross eyed, you "see double". Thats because the right eye is looking at a "frame" out to the left, and the left eye a "frame" out the the right. They aren't focused, hence the seeing double. But, if you bring your seeing-double view so the two stereoscopic pictures converge at, kinda a third picture in the middle, then viola, you are feeding your brain an effective 3D image.

Note that you can also achieve the same effect by looking _through_ the pictures, ie focusing out in the distance. This way the right eye looks at the right picture, the left eye at the left picture. The cross eyed method actually forces the left picture into the right eye and the right picture into the left eye. Personally I find it easier to force the cross eyed view than to relax the eyes into a "parallel view".

Not everyone can do this, if you can't, sorry, try www.magiceye or www.vision3d site for 3D viewing tips!

Kitchen

This is looking from our family room into the kitchen. Focus on the two downlights in the background and cross eye until they meet in the middle, then relax at that point until your eyes focus on the stereoscopic picture. Try to coverge on the flowers if the downlights are not working for you.

3D picture

Pembee

This is looking out from the deck of my holiday house. In the first picture, try to get the seeing-double sheds to merge in the middle, then relax to let your eyes focus. In the second one use the green pole in the forground.

Note in the second one there are some "artifacts". It might be the wind but I suspect it is the CCD on my digital camera not resolving the fine detail. After resizing the images you'd think it would get better but they are still there. Interesting...

3D picture
3D picture