I was hiking in the Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona with my siblings. The scenery is spectacular and the hikes just right. I hadn’t expected it to be such a special place. You can see why it’s a monument. It looks just like what everyone thinks “Wild West Desert” should look like: huge rock columns in narrow canyons topped by impossibly balanced house-sized boulders.
While on the Echo Canyon Trail, I began to wish I had a stereo camera with me. The views were just so three-dimensional. 2D photos just aren’t good enough. As we hiked along, it occurred to me, “Why not just take two photos, one after the other while shifting the lens of the phone horizontally between shots? I bet I can view them as stereo pairs of them later.” So for the rest of the hike, that’s what I did. Two photos of each view, shifted by about the distance between my eyes.
On the ride back from the monument I got to thinking about how to view the shots I’d taken and decided I’d build a Holmes stereoscope – one of those Victorian VR headsets that use pairs of photos mounted on cards:
When we were back in in town that evening, I went looking for a source for stereoscope lenses. Oh, the internet is a great thing. Almost immediately I came across Berezin Stereo Photography Products (berezin.com). And yup, they sell 'em. Glass for $60 a pair, or plastic for $20. By the time we’d wrapped up our adventure and I made it back home, the plastic lenses were waiting for me.
I formatted a bunch of my photo pairs to fit on cards the same size and shape as the ones used on the old stereoscopes and printed them out. Then I set about designing my stereoscope to fit the cards and the lenses I’d bought. Here’s what I came up with:
What a super cool project! Neat that you had the idea while you could take advantage of those spectacular views. I’ve been in that area and totally agree on the beauty of the area. And on the opposite side of the valley we used to sit on mine tailings and pick up tiny pieces of azurite and malachite (ha ha—that’s how we spent our vacations, grubbing in the dirt).
I love how you got a working model of the viewer put together!
This is sooo cool! My uncle has a stereoscope with vintage photos including some from one of the wars. I was mesmerized by it. I never thought about building my own. Plus I do a ton of photography. I may have to give that a whirl sometime. I don’t have a 3d printer but I’m betting you wouldn’t ‘have’ to. Thanks for the info!
Very cool. I have a high tech 360 degree camera (Theta X) but I don’t use it a lot because the photos need to be viewed through special software or VR glasses. The stereo effect with an old school stereoscope would be a great middle ground between flat pictures and VR 360s.
When you shift by “the distance between your eyes” is that tear-duct to tear-duct distance or pupil to pupil distance? I’d think the latter but don’t want to assume.
I, too, have spent many hours sorting through tailings next to abandoned desert mines. Azurite, malachite, and occasionally smithsonite. We used to compete with our kids for who can find the “best” one. And then argue about the definition of “best”!
Nominally, the amount of shift is pupil-to-pupil, as you surmised. It averages about 62mm for adult females, and 64mm for adult males. But, in practice, it isn’t really all that critical. I aim for the high side of that to get a slightly exaggerated 3D effect.
I could make the cards that way, but I gave up on having my own photo printer some time ago. I wasn’t using it enough to make it worth the care and feeding required. Now I use a nearby print shop.where they do all that. On better equipment than I can afford!
I made a stereoscope out of wood a few decades ago…long before GF and 3d printers existed. I even made a mount for a tripod that would let me shift my SLR (pre DSLR too) a pupil-to-pupil distance for the second shot. Thanks for showing a modern GF and 3D printer version. (I own both now.) I think I’ll try it. I would add that as the owner of an iPad Mini I would consider joining my two photos in photo manipulation software (something as simple as Irfanview) and then displaying on the Mini in place of a printed card. Higher up front cost, but then a lot lower cost to produce and no trips to Staples… And with a tablet you can view in the dark.
