Recently James Cameron ,mega director of Titanic, said that one of the ways to get customers back into the movie theater is…..3D!

With the advent of big screen,HD and home theater systems, the studios have to offer something truly special to get people into the theater.
Yes good movies help.
3D is a pretty unique offering with Superman having 17 3/4 min of 3D in IMAX, and a lot of animated movies coming in 3D.

All True.

But still photography has been in this 3D world for years!

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St. Louis Worlds Fair 1904
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NYC Bridge

using anaglyph glasses (red/blue) the dimensionality is visible. WHAT? You don’t have a pair?
OK, email us and we’ll send you some.

The Stereoscope

“The first stereoscopes called the Wheatstone’s stereoscope was developed around 1833 by British inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone. These first stereoscopes predate photography and the stereopairs in those days were created as hand drawings, similar to today where we create synthetic stereo pairs using computer graphics. The first stereoscope with a lens is attributed to David Brewster around 1849 and used paper prints contained within a box. The stereoscope shown here was developed around 1868 by Oliver Wendell Holmes and Joseph Bates, it force the eyes to only see the image they are supposed to see by using a lens and placing a physical barrier between the images.”
copyright Paul Burke 2005

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Classic

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Ummm…Modern??

There have been updates in the gear It used to be a Kodak Realist that used 2 lenses for the dual imagery.The center one is your main viewing lens.

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In the 80′s the Nimslo 4 lens camera created images that were seen through a reticulated plastic screen and required no special lenses. Actually did some pretty good 8 x 10 images with one of these. Limited printing companies.

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You have all probably used a Viewmaster. Imagine that and a boxful of circular disks of images from around the world, is your “entertainment center”. First introduced at the 1939 Worlds Fair, they are still around. I think we’ve all have seen the circular discs and clicked away.

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But until holography becomes a consumer friendly technique to view still images in multiple dimensions, our choices have not really changed much in the past hundred years, as far as still phtography is concerned.

There is something about the 3 dimensional image that facinates us.The strange sense of perspective that is real but a little forced. A different way of seeing.

And it has not just been in the consumer market.

Last year at the PhotoLA trade fair, an artist used the technicue and had the red/blue glasses. sitting on a pefect ledge.

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And this week, we will share some of the very cool , 3D photography of Mark Blum. A lawyer by trade, he published a series of books a few years back that were sellouts. Hard to find now actually. In good shape. Mainly underwater work, Galapagos book is amazing and rare.

What was great about these books is that they used the stereoscope method of two images and each book had the glasses built in , and its very easy to adjust to your eyes and enjoy the 3D.

Now they may be kids books, But we’ll give away 5 new, signed copies of Beneath to Sea in 3D, to the first 5 kids who reply to this weeks email.[photopress:Book1.gif,full,alignright]

And maybe, just maybe…spark some interest in a different of seeing.

Check out 3D Stereo.com.
And for a full list of references ,click here.

Tomorrow, we’ll share a great way to use your digital camera to make new 3D stereo images.

Would that be something you’d be interested in?
(thanks Entourage)

Cheers!
Damon Webster

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 12:18 am and is filed under Photo News, Weekly Giveaway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.