[HN Gopher] Stereographer
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       Stereographer
        
       Author : msephton
       Score  : 46 points
       Date   : 2024-08-06 10:56 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.engineersneedart.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.engineersneedart.com)
        
       | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
       | Something not often considered is that cross-eyed stereograms
       | allow for both better focus and (if desired by the artist) also
       | stronger depth when someone is viewing the image without hardware
       | assistance.
       | 
       | The two unassisted viewing options for the majority of people are
       | either crossing your eyes or looking _through_ the image to
       | infinity. Intentional exotropia is completely off the table,
       | because almost nobody can do that (because there 's no natural
       | point to doing it, unlike crossing which is how you look at
       | things near your face).
       | 
       | And the problems with looking through the image to infinity are
       | that
       | 
       | 1) If the image is near you, you're now naturally _focusing_ far
       | away, which means you 're not focusing up close on the image
       | plane like you would be if your eyes were crossing, so the image
       | is blurry without an unnatural muscle behavior.
       | 
       | 2) If the image is meaningfully far away, the angular difference
       | you can achieve between it and a horizon vanishing point is just
       | too small to achieve overlap between the halves unless the image
       | itself is very small, which you then won't be able to see anyway.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | Of course I can't view cross-eyed stereograms, but I can look
         | through the image. Likely the author is the same way?
         | 
         | [edit]
         | 
         | Some people have asked how I read things that are up close if I
         | can't cross my eyes; I close one eye.
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | I have one of these
       | 
       | https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
       | 
       | occasionally I've made a red-cyan anaglyph that has been really
       | striking and I also view my stereograms with a Meta Quest 3.
       | (Though I really want one of these to shoot pano
       | https://us.kandaovr.com/products/obsidian-r)
       | 
       | I've done a lot of debugging as to why some images don't work as
       | well as I expect them to, the last discovery I made it is the Ego
       | has a little bit of pincushion distortion so objects in the L and
       | R channels don't line up perfectly vertically and my
       | stereographer friends all think that's bad. (I am transitioning
       | now from "bored of photography" to "biggest studio project ever"
       | so maybe I will find time to photograph a grid and make a filter
       | to undo the pincushioning)
       | 
       | I think the best formula I've found for stereograms is a group
       | portrait where the background is really far in the background. I
       | slide the L/R channels horizontally to keep the image close to
       | the paper which makes the image look like an ordinary photo but a
       | little blurry/stylized but then you put on the glasses and wow.
       | Other than that though it's been really hit or miss and I haven't
       | really found "my vision" in stereography yet.
        
       | DidYaWipe wrote:
       | There's a way to build a 3-D adapter setup (with mirrors) for an
       | SLR-style camera that actually splits the image across
       | horizontally, so you get two wide images instead of two narrow
       | ones. Not sure if that's useful for a stereoscope, however. For
       | video or projection, it would be superior.
       | 
       | 3-D pictures are very entertaining and atmospheric. I have a
       | Kodak stereo camera that I've taken on trips to various countries
       | since high school, and a 3-D projector and silver screen. With
       | polarized glasses, you can walk right up to the screen and still
       | see the depth.
       | 
       | After seeing it, people almost always asked where they could get
       | this or why it isn't used more.
       | 
       | The movie studios deserve scorn for ruining the marketability of
       | 3-D yet again by releasing one fake "3-D" movie after another, as
       | we finally had really good and widespread 3-D projection
       | available.
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | The movie industry got stuck in a terrible place with 3-D as an
         | "add on" to a regular movie that contextualizes 3-D as just
         | another money grab. The trouble is somewhere around 5-10%
         | people find stereo movies uncomfortable and 20% or so people
         | are stereo blind and don't get anything out of them.
         | 
         | So you have to show the same movie in both formats which, as it
         | see it, is something that costs money instead of making money,
         | and is only going to work for movies big enough and theaters
         | big enough to be able to do that. (e.g. the multiplex at the
         | mall is part of a chain that teeters on the edge of bankruptcy
         | so the local arthouse theater sometimes shows movies like
         | "Deadpool & Wolverine" in their first run)
         | 
         | People associate 3-d with that kind of movie but actually the
         | rapid cuts and motion of movies like that don't give your brain
         | time to lock onto stereo whereas documentaries (see
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_3D) and dramatic
         | content are really powerful.
         | 
         | I have some software that works like Disney's multiplane camera
         | (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplane_camera) that I
         | use for synthesizing stereo scenes (and other things) and one
         | problem that turns up is that the curvature of objects hides
         | some pixels from one eye but not the other eye. You can't just
         | cut some objects out of the scene and slide those parts
         | relative to each other but you've got to have something for
         | those pixels or make something up. The flip side of that
         | however is that a stereo picture of a close up of a person
         | shows maybe 10-15% more area of the face which means more of
         | the little muscles that indicate emotion. You are seeing a
         | little bit more in a 3-d movie just as you see a little bit
         | more when you see actors on stage and even if you're not aware
         | of it consciously I think it adds to your emotional reaction.
         | 
         | (... so far that software has used a simple rendering approach
         | but I'm very likely to upgrade it to do ray tracing because I
         | want to get very accurate depth of field effects including
         | occlusion)
        
           | DidYaWipe wrote:
           | "The movie industry got stuck in a terrible place with 3-D as
           | an "add on" to a regular movie"
           | 
           | Well, they didn't just "get stuck" there; they put themselves
           | there. That was a choice. They should have shot in 3-D when
           | they wanted to release in 3-D, and refrained from post-
           | processed fake 3-D in all cases.
           | 
           | Seth Rogan said that he and... I don't remember, maybe the
           | director of Green Hornet wanted to shoot in 3-D and the
           | studio turned them down. After it was done, the studio
           | changed its mind and made it into fake 3-D.
           | 
           | And yes, there's a misperception that "action" and
           | "spectacle" movies are the best for 3-D. Wrong. The coolest
           | 3-D pictures I've shot are often indoor scenes with lots of
           | objects; for example, a long dinner table set with dishware
           | and glasses, with an open door in the background revealing a
           | cobblestone street.
           | 
           | Most people scoffing at "3-D" have probably seen almost none
           | of it. Many people have only seen one legitimate 3-D movie:
           | Avatar. Otherwise they might have seen a Pixar movie rendered
           | in 3-D; or if they're lucky, Hugo. Or the Transformers one
           | where they tear up Chicago. Most did not see Drive Angry.
           | 
           | Beyond that, I'm hard-pressed to name a modern movie shot in
           | 3-D.
        
       | munificent wrote:
       | I've been feeling a lot of "the web is dying" lately. When I
       | search for something, the results are often SEO glurge, AI-
       | generated nonsense, AI-generated nonsense directly in the search
       | results, or some unholy combination of all three where the search
       | engine AI-generates some sort of summary based on decade-old
       | bullshit SEO glurge.
       | 
       | This article is a great reminder of what the web used to be and
       | what some corners of the web still are: a smart, creative person
       | using effort to share something they care about with the world.
       | 
       | I don't want AIs giving me sanitized informational summaries. I
       | want meaningful stories told by people.
       | 
       | I love it.
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | Have you tried https://search.marginalia.nu yet?
        
           | munificent wrote:
           | I've toyed around with it. I also use DuckDuckGo on my phone.
           | They're OK.
        
       | ofrzeta wrote:
       | I would love to play around with some consumer 3D stuff. Either
       | some kit to take anaglyphs or a 3D camera. The Nintendo 3DS has a
       | 3D camera as far as I understand and several years ago 3D image
       | cellphones where a thing, too
       | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D-enabled_mobile_phon...)
       | This seems to have turned into a dead end, though. Oh, and the
       | Lytro, too.
        
         | hoherd wrote:
         | The 3DS does indeed have a 3d camera, and it produces MPO
         | files, so theoretically it should be perfect for use with this
         | app.
        
         | fitsumbelay wrote:
         | phew, mans said "Lytro" ...
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | I have a Lytro Illium and the software for it is supposed to
         | make stereograms but so far I've failed to get any depth out of
         | it.
         | 
         | This
         | 
         | https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
         | 
         | is probably the best easy-to-use stereo camera on the market
         | today.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | In about the $300-ish range, the FUJIFILM (and a few Lumix)
         | stereo cameras are still available on eBay.
        
       | Gettingolderev wrote:
       | You can also combine two images and flip them in a gif constantly
       | to see it in 3d.
       | 
       | Makes it a lot more accessable on the internet too :)
        
       | dekhn wrote:
       | Canon released a lens to simplify stereoscopy:
       | https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/rf5-2mm-f2-8-l-dual-fisheye...
        
       | Uncorrelated wrote:
       | The Nintendo 3DS is presumably (with over 75 million units sold)
       | the most popular camera that takes 3D photos in the MPO format.
       | Unfortunately, the original 3DS's cameras are rather poor:
       | absolutely dreadful dynamic range and tons of color noise.
       | However, they did improve the cameras on the New Nintendo 3DS,
       | which I've never owned. I've even considered making some homebrew
       | to apply computational photography techniques on the 3DS to
       | reduce noise and improve dynamic range, but I'm not at a point in
       | my life where I can justify that right now.
       | 
       | I was looking at my old 3DS photos just recently, and there's not
       | much software to read MPO files, so this project looks pretty
       | darn cool and I'll be checking it out.
       | 
       | Something that I'm sure some people aren't aware of is that the
       | 3DS's 640x480 photos don't match the resolution or aspect ratio
       | of the 15:9 400x240 (800x240, but halved horizontally for 3D)
       | screen, so the 3DS photo gallery actually shows photos zoomed in
       | by default. If you didn't know this, now you can revisit your 3DS
       | photos and see extra photo for free by pulling down on the circle
       | pad.
       | 
       | Edit: I should mention - I did say that there's not much software
       | that reads MPO files, but one program that does is StereoPhoto
       | Maker. https://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html I haven't
       | tried it out yet, but it supports aligning and batch-processing
       | 3D images, among other features.
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | I've got a New Nintendo 3DS. I took a nice stereogram at the
         | Vietnam War Memorial at the National Mall with it but that's
         | about it.
         | 
         | My stereo production toolchain is based on PIL and PIL reads
         | MPOs. An MPO is just two JPGs concatenated together so they
         | aren't hard to read. My photog friends swear by Stereo Photo
         | Maker but in my book it is "just another image processing
         | program by people who don't understand gamma correction" but
         | Adobe Photoshop is dangerously close to that category too.
        
       | boutell wrote:
       | This is great! I was once the proud owner of an HTC Evo 3D, a
       | smartphone that took 3D photos and displayed them natively with a
       | lenticular display. It also ran hot as hell and was pretty much
       | unusable until I added after-market swipe-spelling and an
       | alternative app browser. It also took MPO format pictures.
       | 
       | As near as I could tell at the time, the MPO format is literally
       | just two JPEGs directly appended in one file.
        
       | sllabres wrote:
       | A long time I used two small consumer cameras mounted on a rail
       | side by side and combined the two photographs on my TV (which was
       | 3D capable with simple passive goggles), which produced quite
       | nice 3D photos.
       | 
       | Triggering the two cameras was completely manual but worked
       | almost all time, even when taking photos objects in slow motion,
       | as example people o animals.
       | 
       | For this part of photography experimenting it is a bit
       | unfortunately that all TV builders abandoned the 3D capability of
       | their TV sets.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-06 23:01 UTC)