F300EXR – Review Part 12 – 3D

Ok, this is a fluff piece. I enjoy fooling around with 3D, so I thought I’d shoot a bit of 3D magic with a setup I saw on one of the forums. Probably FTF. Sorry for forgetting who showed it.

I bought a set of Adorama macro rails pretty cheaply on fredmiranda.com a couple of years ago. I don;t use them often, but they are indispensible for close macro work and product shooting. With a powerful lens set to closest focus, it is trivial to dial the whole rig back and forth until perfect focus is achieved. With magnified live view, there is no excuse for a lack of precision.

Of course, this shoot is a very different animal … place the F300EXR in the rig by attaching a spare lens plate to its bottom, then align it to where the shot should go (I got lazy and did a half-assed job) and finally shoot. To shoot the two images needed for stereo viewing, you shoot one and then dial the image to the right by a few centimeters and then shoot again.

Here is that setup …

You can see it moved around two centimeters … just enough to focus on one side of the tiny statue and then on the other.

Next, you take the two images and place them on the same image side by side (don’t accidentally swap left for right here) and leave a black band in between of something like a centimeter or less. Enough so crossing the eyes is comfortable. Here is that image and I find it really easy to lock in a 3D image.

Please click through and view the larger version :-)

Edit: Bill’s been busting my chops down below in the comments about reversing the order of the images … left on the right and right on the left. Well, I should not have doubted him on that … his research skills exceed my own and he is dead right. Here is that version, and the 3D effect is much more pronounced and easier to achieve and hold. Sheesh :-)

Thanks Bill.

And finally … a trick I learned somewhere on the forums. I can create an animated gif with the main subject aligned, then swap frames quickly and your brain will see the image in 3D. I showed it before with a real hacked attempt … this time it aligns very closely. Way cool … again, click through for the larger one.

Try it … it’s a hoot :-)