Here’re the success stories from the 3D camera rig over the Expo weekend, in anaglyph mode (requires red/cyan 3D glasses, other colours or cinema glasses won’t cut the proverbial mustard):

and eyebending-autostereogram mode (sit back, dead centre and level to picture, cross eyes until each side overlaps in the middle, relax and your eyes should focus eventually, takes practice but no glasses!):

Yeah there’s one that only has a red/cyan version, turns out holding the camera at a 45-degree angle does HORRIBLE THINGS to your eyes in autostereogram, who’d have thought? :p  The red/cyan version sort of ish works, the effect is there anyway.

So how did it fare? Not so bad, not so great, a bit of both. In my brief tests the differences between the two cameras (450d and 550d) weren’t enough to cause problems – resizing the larger picture to match the smaller worked just fine. In practice, something else is up; the 450d is delivering darker images with more shadows and sharper backgrounds, while the 550d consistently manages lighter shadows and a slight orange-reddish tint to everything in comparison.

Now whether this is at least partly due to the 450d’s lens having been dropped is uncertain. The lens only closes up to 2.8 and even that’s a case of the lens will close in smaller increments up until that point, whether it’s accurately that value is uncertain – though eyeballing it, it looks to be true. Taking a few pictures at home and matching the sharpness up it seems going to f/3.5 on the 550d brought the closest match to the 450d’s new f/2.8 max (just to be clear, it’s the broken lens’s max, the camera itself is fine).

I’ve managed to clear up most of the issues in post, but not much can fix the difference in bokeh. Luckily the human brain is pretty damned smart and many of us already have differences between our eyes that it compensates for without anyone but our optician noticing. Thus most of the time it doesn’t affect the final result much, but it’s unideal. I’ll have to do more testing, try swapping lenses and so on. PITA :P

Still, it was a fun experiment, the 3D rig got a lot more people talking to me than I’m used to and it is a fun gimmick to wave around. Despite the fact it’s made of doorframe, ducttape and homemade wiring, while one lens is wrapped in yellow PVC tape to designate its borkedness, people still seem to generally go LOOK OUT, ITS A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER! QUICK, EVERYONE VOGUE!

Any sufficiently advanced (looking) technology is indistinguishable from magic, as they say!

General last-minute-ish update.

I’ll be in attendance is usual, packing up so I can head up early and help with cosplay desk setup ecetera, so posting this now.

If there’s wallspace again near the cosplay desk then the 3D gallery will return! With fancier glasses! Yay. On that note also, I have created something monsterous:

That right there is a stereo camera bracket!  To what end, you might ask?  MORE 3D

Currently I’ve been taking 3D stereo photographs with a single camera, by getting the cosplayer to hold still and physically moving myself to get the dual images required to mimic each eye’s view. Since I now have two cameras, and the old 50mm lens was damaged (no longer closes aperture past f/2.8 T_T) a replacement was required but the old one can sit on my old 450d and VOILA, both strapped to each other I can now take true stereo photographs. ACTION SHOTS, PEOPLE!

Sadly only at f/2.8 when 3D pictures work better with sharp backgrounds but can’t really be picky here.

I went through various iterations of how to make this thing, I don’t have a great deal of money or tools and accuracy is kind of a big thing with this.. So it’s made from a doorframe’s carpet edging slat, for lack of an accurate name, which had screw holes in exactly the right distance apart for what I needed, how lucky?

Sawed it to measure, drilled larger holes for the tripod screws (broke a drillbit in the process, metal is haaard T_T) and bent into the correct shape with a vice and MY TWO HANDS.  Cameras are held in place with aforementioned tripod screws, and a couple of anti-slip self-adhesive furniature pads.  There’s also a little plug holding the hotshoes together for extra stability made out of hotglue and bits of a plastic CDR-protector disc, and tied to the rest of the bracket with fishing wire so I don’t lose it.

Cameras are linked via HARD WORK AND TEARS.  I was trying to solder together a Y-splitter for 2.5mm jacks so I could use my current remote trigger and link both cameras to it, but you know what? 2.5mm jacks are TINY, I got one done fine but the other was a different design on the inside and near impossible to solder.. They were the last two I could find too -_-  Ended up with a 3.5mm->2.5mm converter and then pillaged a 3.5mm jack from old earphones. Once finally wired up and after several misfires where wires crossed and many inadvertant photos were taken, I found out that the remote isn’t needed – as luck would have it when you use the shutter button, the signal cable is closed so a straight 2.5mm->2.5mm lead in each camera will essentially sync them without hassle, press the shutter on one, both fire!  bonus. Saves juggling the rig and a remote trigger cable!  A quick rewire and it’s good to go for Expo time.

Long story short, if you’ve got a cool costume that’d look good in 3D, FIND ME!  I doubt I’ll be lugging both cameras in the bracket all day but can’t hurt to ask. If the weather is nice I’ll likely be outside for the majority of the time, but this is me, I’ll be everywhere really.

So here’s a few Kita pictures I had the presence of mind to take 3D versions of..

Here be the cross-eyed autostereogram versions:

aaand the red/blue anaglyph versions:

Also going to be moving servers sometime real soonish, just got to port everything across, so things may go asplode for a while but as usual I’ll be sure to hack it back into operation quickish.