Incredible realistic miniature model landscapes by Matthew Alabanese
January 26, 2010
In stereo photography there is a term, hyper-stereo which means taking two images with a lens separation greater than the normal interocular of about 2.5 inches. Ortho-stereo refers to images taken with a lens separation that approximates the normal human-sized view of the world. Hyper-stereo images are what it might be like to view the world from a giant’s perspective, or even greater.
Two cameras can be set up several feet or even many yards apart to take a landscape view like one of the Grand Canyon. The depth effect is very pronounced but it makes it appear as if we are looking at a miniature model of the Grand Canyon.
None of this has anything to do with the amazing miniature landscapes created out of ordinary materials like sugar, corn syrup, paprika and tile grout by model builder and photographer Matthew Albanese. Except that they remind me of many hyper-stereo views I’ve seen over the years.
Below are two samples of his work showing a Martian landscape and how he achieves a realistic cloud effect with just lighting and cotton wool. For the complete gallery at the Telegraph UK go here. Click on images for larger size.
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Rare Color Photo of Beatles, circa 1957
January 18, 2010
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Winter Anaglyphs
January 14, 2010
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The Year in Space Photography 2009
December 23, 2009
The attitude this holiday season is very much anti-Big Government (whatever that even means in a country of 308 million people). There’s a widespread doctrine today that says the gummit cain’t never do nuthin right. So here’s something that, I think, Big Government is doing well: taking pictures of our amazing, astounding universe.
The shot above is a Hubble false-color image of glowing gas and dark dust clouds in a star-forming region in the constellation Cassiopeia just over 6,000 light-years away. Click on image for larger size.
There’s a great selection of images at the Telegraph UK site here, taken in 2009 from the Hubble Space telescope, the Chandra X-Ray telescope, and the Spitzer Space telescope. Your tax dollars at work.
I always find these images of the vasty deep sky humbling. In one way they seem to be the ultimate rebuke to religion. Oh yeah, obviously the folklore and superstition of a Bronze Age desert tribe is the best way to filter and interpret our knowledge of the Universe. For sure.
I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that all the problems of our little planet don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy Universe. Someday you’ll understand that. Here’s looking at you, Cassiopeia.
Luna is Thankful for Her Ball — 3D
November 26, 2009
This anaglyph shows what I believe is Luna at her happiest. Click on image for larger size.
Fuji Finepix 3D W1: 3D without Film, Glasses or Photoshop
November 19, 2009
“. . .You take a picture of your neighbor’s dog and within seconds you are viewing that same image in full color 3D — without glasses — on the back of your camera.”
Here’s an anaglyph I made from images taken by the new Fuji Finepix 3D W1, the world’s first twin-lens digital 3D camera (with two 10 MP CCD sensors). The subject is a neighbor’s dog, a Golden Retriever puppy named Bailey. Click on image for larger size.
I’ve only had the camera for a few days, so please take these comments as preliminary thoughts.
Objectively, I have to say that if you are a 3D shooter OMG! you’ve-gotta-go-out-and-BUY-THE-FUJI-W1-before-you-finish-reading-this-sentence!!
If you are not among the small percentage of photographers who already shoot 3D with digital twin rigs or film cameras, you’ll probably want to learn a little more.
Here’s their press release on the well-respected Digital Photography Review site.
Here’s a stunningly negative review titled, “Fuji W1 3D Camera. . .The Worst Camera Ever Made” from the Akihabara Live from Japan news site. Followed by a more temperate review after Akihabara’s staff was contacted by FUJI. TIME magazine weighs in and lists the FUJI W1 as one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009.
A great source of information from people who have the camera and are exploring its possibilities is the Fuji3D Yahoo Group started by Linda Nygren.
If your interest runs to Stereo Macros, check out this attachment made partly of Erector set parts by Donald E. Simanek, here. Click on image for larger size.
For Mac OS X users, check out Mike’s Stereoscopic Web Site. In addition to lots of useful information he provides versions of his program, 3D Slide Maker for Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard users. The Snow Leopard version provides support for .MPO files.
The Challenge! REAL 3D and Mac web site by Junji Ikeda offers a program he created called Stereo Splicer that works with Mac OS 10.4 or later to separate out the Left and Right images in an .MPO file and produce anaglyphs, parallel and cross-view pairs.
Another Mac option is the cross-platform Java program Stereomerger by Geir Øyvind Vælidalo.
There are some intriguing two lens options aside from the 3D, but the main selling point of this camera is the 3D. Examples of what FUJI calls Advanced 2D Twin Camera Mode where each lens takes the same picture with different options: color settings, ISO settings, zoom and non-zoom. Interesting, but clearly not why anyone would buy this camera.
There’s no viewfinder on the W1, like many digital point-and-shoots, so you view your 3D and frame it on the rear screen, 2.25 wide by 1.75 inches high.
This is one of the things that Fuji got right on this 1.0 version. The screen has crisp, clean color and displays the picture you took just a moment ago in color and 3D.
Though to be sure, the screen’s small sweet spot makes it a single user experience. A shift of say, five degrees in either direction while viewing your pictures and the 3D effect vanishes and your image collapses into ordinary 2D.
Let me repeat, what I think is the major selling point to the general audience, you take a picture of your neighbor’s dog and within seconds you are viewing that same image in full color 3D — without glasses — on the back of your camera.
Given the history of all previous 3D cameras that have required post processing and a degree of skill to get best results, this almost instant 3D color display feels revolutionary, not evolutionary.
Want to know how this display works? See this explanation (with diagrams) on the Dimension Technologies web site.
Size, weight and form factor: The W1 weighs about 11 oz. with battery and SD card inside. It’s 4.9 X 2.7 X 1.0 inches, the case is metal, so think chunkier, heavier iPhone. The left lens is at the extreme edge of the camera face and this means the W1 must be held by it’s edges. Is there some technical reason that the lenses and the flash couldn’t be centered on the camera’s face?
This can be a major adjustment from handling a traditional single lens camera, but hey, it’s 3D — it’s worth it. After a while you won’t even think about it.
Lack of internal battery to maintain settings: a small minus. If the camera’s battery runs out you’ll lose your initial stored settings for language, date and time. My suggestion: buy a second FUJI NP-95 battery for $30 and get this $9 charger from Amazon: Maximal Power FC600 Rapid Travel Charger for Fuji Battery.
Also, the camera fits nicely in the $9.00 Case Logic # TBC303 Black with a zippered storage pocket on the front that neatly holds an additional battery and SD cards.
Image quality: Too soon to tell, if I am honest. I suspect that my Canon twin-rig of two 7 MP SD 1000’s takes better images in a wider range of settings. But I’ve yet to subject that to direct comparison. It may just be that I’m more familiar with how to optimize the Canon settings.
In addition, my twin rig occasionally goes out of sync and must be restarted. That sync issue does not occur with this new Fuji. And the W1 is significantly smaller than my twin-rig and has no sharp edges (unlike my twin rig).
One thing I notice when using the flash — some of my images have been subject to the small, glowing disc shapes that amateur ghost hunters point to in snap shots as mysterious orbs of psychic energy, Ghost Lights. But are, in reality, just the flash inadvertently catching dust motes in the air, and reflecting back the light.
Could the fact that the flash is centered between the two lenses instead of above (or even off-camera) be the reason this happens? I don’t experience this effect with my other digital cameras, shooting in the same environments.
Menus, Settings and Camera Controls: Well executed and similar to the typical digital point-and-shoot camera format. I’m more familiar with Canon and Nikon interfaces, but this one seems well thought out. The controls are on both sides of the LCD screen, three buttons a side. These buttons toggle to double the number of features you can access.
The negative review cited above claims, “I struggled for hours to understand how to set the ISO and I had to read the user’s manual (lame).” Surely this is an exaggeration. Hours of struggling? RTFM. To change the ISO you press the F-Mode Menu (lower right hand topggle) and ISO is the first option on a Menu that includes Image Size, Image Quality, White Balance, Exposure Compensation & FinePix Color Settings.
Yes, it is a horrible shortcoming that you might actually have to refer to a single page in the manual that comes with your new camera.
In addition to the functions you’d expect to find on a digital camera — Menu, OK, Trash, Macro, Flash Mode, Video, Display, etc. — there’s a toggle switch to go from 2D to 3D mode and, most striking of all, Parallax Control. This enables you to change the parallax during playback to adjust the stereo window. However, you have to go through too many hoops and menus to save a copy of your new window adjustment, IMO.
Besides, for viewing your images off the W1, you’ll probably want to make more adjustments with a an image processor like the free Windows program, Stereo Photo Maker or a major image editing monster like Photoshop.
Click on image for larger size.
Another new digital image file format .MPO It should be made clear that Fuji uses a new .MPO file format to store your stereo image pair. It’s a proposed standard for storing more than one JPEG in a single file. So .MPO is not strictly proprietary, just very, very new. This combined JPEG format has applications outside of 3D, like bracketing exposures and High Dynamic Range photography.
The MPO file format is limiting. Currently no major image editor will correctly open an .MPO file into its two component right and left JPEG’s. What you get when you can open them, is a single JPEG, the image taken by the left lens.
Stereo Photo Maker has recently been updated to open .MPO files. On the Mac side, there is no comparable software at any price. There are new programs to open .MPO for Mac users coming out, like SplitMPO. It’s my hope these will increase. And with all the photographers (and families) that use Macs, why hasn’t a cross-platform or Mac only program as good as SPM been developed?
Maybe the Fuji W1 will inspire some Mac code monkeys to rise to this challenge.
.MPO format only allows JPEGs, so you’ve already lost image information, right? A RAW option for each right and left image would be a great improvement. But perhaps this would mean little to the average point-and-shoot customer and was never even considered as an option. Even allowing the option to natively save the separate JPEG images would be a step in a more open direction.
FUJI has an interest in driving users of the W1 towards their stereo processing options: lenticular prints and an optional digital picture frame, the FinePix REAL 3D V1 Viewer, that at $500 is nearly as expensive as the camera itself (at $600).
You really need more than a single stereo pair to make a decent lenticular print so the process seems inherently flawed. I haven’t seen one of these prints but the word coming back from those who have is disappointing. This service is being offered by FUJIFILM’s SeeHere Photo Sharing site and the cost is $6.99 per print (they don’t indicate the size). That price seems like it’s set up to discourage, rather than encourage orders.
The digital picture frame model is surely the better path towards a general, as opposed to specialist market. No need for any ‘work’ by the photographer. Pop your SD card in the FUJI frame and enjoy a slide show in full color 3D with no glasses required! That’s what the Average Snap Shot Taking family, party and vacation photographer wants. Or so Fuji hopes. . .
As with the prints I haven’t seen the FUJI Viewer. Sight unseen, I still think the price point should be lower for this. However, this seems to me like the right track to a broader audience. Digital picture frames are already established in the marketplace.
The move everywhere is away from print to digital, so perhaps FUJI thinks there will be only a small market segment that actually wants physical prints of their 3D images. I think they may be right about this.
Given the resurgence of 3D in the movie marketplace, is it too much to hope for success for this camera? So that there may be future models with additional small refinements?
FUJI certainly makes the 3D shooting experience open to the great majority of digital camera users; people who would be unlikely to invest the time in processing two film or digital images into 3D, as every other system requires. The owner of the FUJI W1 doesn’t have to post process their pictures at all. It’s done for you by the W1’s software.
3D without glasses, film or Photoshop! I’d call that revolutionary.
Fireplace anaglyph made with stereo pair taken with FUJI W1’s Slow Synchro Flash Mode setting. Click on image for larger size.
Halloween Pumpkin Carvings 2009
October 31, 2009
This October I carved a total of 15 pumpkins; not included are images of the Phantom of the Opera, 
another Feather variation, a Candlestick, a different Skull, a 1950s style Devil and a Werewolf. The white pumpkin feather and the skull are shown twice, each after a bit of putrefaction has set in.
The Labradors depicted here are our two dogs, Huxley (facing right) and Luna (facing left). Comic book aficianados may discern my attempts to render the subtle line work of Steve Ditko (Dr. Strange) and Jack Kirby (Big Barda) in pumpkin flesh.
Happy Halloween!
Click images for larger size.
3D Photography: Pumpkin Carving, Dogs and Fire
September 24, 2009
For 3D viewing, use red-blue (or red-cyan) anaglyph glasses. Click on images for larger size.
Top to Bottom: Pumpkin Carving in New England; Harley, Yellow Lab age 7; Deezey, Black Lab age 3; evening campfire on Russian Beach.
Can’t Afford A Trip to Stonehenge? Go There “Virtually” in Your Browser.
August 2, 2009
Courtesy of the BBC, a Flash-based 360 degree panorama of Stonehenge, here.
Great Collection of over 300 High Quality, FREE Splatter Brushes for Photoshop
August 2, 2009
The good folks over at Smash Apps have put together a collection of over 300 splatter effect brushes for Photoshop from 20 different sources. Well worth checking out, here. Did we mention they are completely FREE!
