6. Example of a 3D Anaglyph Images Only Blog for Chicago

Chicago has many places the are very interesting to view, especially in 3D! Let's start here with its Skyline which in the photo below is viewed from the southbound portion of Chicago's Outer Drive heading from the far north side towards downtown.(We took this shot just before dusk and the cars had already begun turning their headlights on so it is a bit dark on the road. View it and all of the rest of our anaglyph format photos by clicking on them twice to get full screen which gives you the best viewing results because the Fujifilm 3D camera that was used to take them produces photos with very good resolution in full screen mode)

This is a unique expressway in Chicago that runs for about 25 miles all along its beautiful Lake Michigan waterfront from the north side of the city well into its south side. This road makes commuting into downtown from either the north or south sides of town a snap at most times. Its traffic even moves pretty well during rush hours unless there's an accident. This is because there is population on only one side of the road so it doesn't get the inundation of traffic that is generated when there is population on both sides of an expressway.

Below is another view of the same area only closer in to downtown Chicago. The lower front building in this shot is the famous Drake Hotel which back in the 50's was one of Chicago's taller buildings.(We took this shot just a couple of minutes later than our first shot and the street lights had already come on so it turned out  dark at street level.)

Below is a view down Michigan avenue, just as you exit the Outer Drive. (This photo was taken just after the first 2 photos above and all of the big buildings in it made the street level too dark.)

Further along this part of Michigan Ave. which is known world-wide as the "Miracle Mile", is the famous multi-story exclusive shopping center - Water tower Place shown in the image below. (This photo was taken shortly after those above but because of the open space in the shot it turned out a bit brighter than they did at street level)



This part of Michigan Avenue is called the "Miracle Mile" because of all of its top quality hotels and restaurants and its ultra exclusive shops strung along it for about a mile. (This photo of the storefront turned out very well at dusk because of its internal lighting)

The same holds true for this photo below taken at dusk because the store's internal lighting also makes it work.

Some of the shops on this street are beautifully architected so they stand out in a wonderful way like does this one all along the street.

Northern Michigan Ave. in Chicago is a very classy and utterly reeks of big money so many people in Chicago come down here just to rub elbows with the wealthy people who are shopping on it every day! (This photo is not acceptable to us because even though the open space behind it was lighting it up a bit, there just wasn't quite enough light to really brighten the shot adequately.)

This is all for this example blog page of 3D photos in only the anaglyph format. On a live blog we would only use the brightest photos we can take so as to offset the red - cyan glasses darkening effect that you have observed here.

Please proceed to May's #7 post linked in the Archive above.

5. 3D Image Blogging and Website Creation

This idea of 3D image blogging and 3D website creation is an idea that is tailored for those of you who are so fascinated with the 3D venue that you might be willing to pony up a little over $1,000 to start your own 3D imaging micro-business. The 3D images in this blog and on our website could have been taken by you to show off your own geographical areas for tourism promotion and the for the nostalgic reminiscing of your area's expatriates. Others could be created for your family or for your friends' families or for weddings or for other special events. Still others could be created for enterprises that might want to use 3D images in their promotions.

Here's a simple blog we constructed for a friend of ours named Jane. In it we will put more and more photos as we take them so that her worldwide family can view her and her ongoing activities in 3D.

It exemplifies one option of this idea for blogging by suggesting that you allow your photos to be viewed on your blog in the Piku - Piku format at no charge and that you make your money from targeted Google ad revenues and from 3D glasses sales to view the anaglyph versions on another post. This idea is good for friends and for small town and neighborhood blogging.

The second option would use some Piku - Piku photo images on your blog or website but also place albums of anaglyph photos and / or videos within it. In this option Google ad revenues and glasses sales would be used to make you some money.

Here's our tourist website where we do just this for the city of Chicago.This is a growing website that will eventually show 3D visuals of thousands of enterprises and places within the city of Chicago. Here we settled on slide-shows from start3d.com in the no-glasses-3D Piku - Piku format and from Flickr.com in the anaglyph format because we have so many photos to display.

In developing any of these internet ideas, you would have to buy a Fujifilm 3D camera ($450) and a memory card ($40 [$80 for videos]) and the Imagic software ($50) necessary to convert the Fujifilm camera's MPO format photos into steroscopic 3D anaglyph photos so that they may be viewed with red - cyan 3D glasses on any tablet or computer screens. You would also need to buy an initial stock of a few hundred inexpensive cardboard glasses to sell and ship to your fans of your blog and / or your website.

By the way, in case you don't know this, all of the 3D photos that you take will be automatically copyrighted  when you post them onto the internet. Over time AND if they are very unique (hard for others to also produce - say like of a place where a catastrophe or a special event occurs and the scene is forever gone), they could become very valuable.

These ideas might be good entrepreneurial ideas for you (if you are a 3D fan) wherever you may reside in the world because every place is sure to have interesting scenes and / or events which at least a few people somewhere in this world might be interested in viewing in 3D. If you think about it for a moment, you'll come to realize that every place in the entire world has probably already been photographed in the last 180 years since photography was invented. But very few places have been 3D imaged yet, so this is really a wide open field for internet blogging and / or for posting 3D images on websites. You can also 3D shoot events for posterity too like sporting events and / or political gatherings.

You can start up this kind of a low budget micro-business as we have with about $1,000 for the above mentioned purchases and the few extras that always seem to come up. You would also need to utilize a free blog like this one on Google's Blogger or on Word Press or on any of the other free blogging services so as to start with low initial operating costs. As your blog progresses, you might want to increase it into a full blown website which will cost you a few bucks to build and maintain. This will allow you to fully capitalize on Google's Adsense within it. More on that in another post.

In the process of creating your internet 3D micro-business, you can take some tax write-offs from your other personal income for the purchase of your various pieces of equipment, your software purchases and for your initial supply of a few hundred cardboard 3D glasses. You can also write off a portion of your traveling expenses if you need to travel to take your 3D photos and / or videos for the internet. If you buy a new computer for it you can amortize and expense it over 5 years. We plan to do a 3D website on the great scenes in another country later this year and we will write off a portion of our trip expenses to go there and while we travel all around there taking our 3d photos and videos of its many attractions.

From the your targeted Google ad revenues and from selling and shipping anaglyph format red - cyan glasses to your internet fans, you can begin to make some money before you phase out these write-offs. Your initial income will probably not be very big. Ours certainly wasn't. But over time it could pick up for you nicely as it is starting to do for us. And remember,  even earning only a small amount of money for a while makes your blog micro-business into a totally legitimate business endeavor in the eyes of the IRS. This is what qualifies you for tax deductions from your equipment purchases and from your other expenses necessary to the production of your blog, until profitability finally kicks in

Let us mention that above and beyond your initial $1,000 investment, a good new computer is desirable to do the computer processing that you'll need to do with all of the many, many images you will create and in order to post them onto the internet. We advise having a computer with at least a dual core processor or better for fast image conversion processing. If you don't yet have one, an adequate new dual, tri and / or quad-core processor computer with a decent video card and plenty of hard drive memory can be purchased for prices from $600 to $1,500. But if you can't yet afford a new computer you don't absolutely need one to start your blog. However, a new one will be nice for you as you start up and then on into the future, because it will significantly speed up all of your photo and video conversion work.

As we first mentioned, within your $1,000 initial investment, you'll need to make the major purchase of a Fujifilm 3D camera (or its equivalent or better if one comes out). However, if you have the propensity and you want to save that investment money, you can rig up 2 existing identical cameras that you may already have, like 3D photographers in the past have always done, in order to capture your 3D images. But it is so much easier with the Fujifilm 3D camera which we are here touting. Remember, you will get all of this equipment's cost back from your tax write offs and from the sales your blog generates.

Finally, we assume that you will have access to a high speed internet connection through which to upload your videos from your computer to You-Tube so that you can then embed them back from there into your blog or website. When you process your videos in this manner you can gain the advantage of being able to capitalizing on their free promotional tools to get some of their traffic to come to your blog or website.

You also might consider the use of Flickr for your anaglyph photo images (Piku - Piku processed images cannot be posted on Flickr) because of that site's promotional tools for photos which will help you to promote your blog. They also offer 3D print capabilities through Snapfish, their print processing partner.

And then there's Facebook, Friendster, My Space and other social networks within which you may freely promote your blog and / or website, with and through links to it. There you can also upload some of your 3D photos and embed some Piku - Piku processed images and some of your 3D videos as teasers and lures to draw people from those websites onto yours.

Once such a 3D photo and / or video blog or website gets some traffic it would probably give a promotional boost to tourism in the geographical area about which you blog. It would also be a good internet stop for those who once lived in your area to reminisce and / or for those who have visited your area in the past and now nostalgically miss it. They can view the wonderful reality of your blog's 3D images of your geographical area from anywhere in the world and these images will beat any 2D images of it to death as far as realism is concerned.

Such a blog is sure to garner a - WOW or an OMG response from these folks about how nice or bad the place looks or how the place has changed since they were last there! Consequently, you might want to display on your blog or website your e-mail address in order for you and them to correspond back and forth about that. You can also encourage them to "follow" your blog or website so that they can receive automatic e-mail notifications of each of your new 3D image posts, when you make them. If you think about it for a moment, you will realize that all of these folks, because of these factors, will become very good for the "viral" promotion of your blog or website.

This 3D internet activity will probably be well supported by your local community if it's done with their encouragement and maybe even with their participation because of its many benefits to everyone there. So why reinvent the wheel?Use the better business bureau or local community or historical groups to promote your blog or website.

If you do decide to do any of this, please let us know about it and we will help you with it and link you blog or website here on our blog to help you to get some of our internet traffic. We will also encourage our followers to link to those sites and we will encourage any others who are doing similar blogs to link to them as well. We hope that over time, by uniting in cross-links, the viral nature of all of our 3D imaging will contribute increasingly to getting tons of red - cyan anaglyph 3D glasses out to as many people as possible which will further promote the anaglyph 3D format world-wide. Then, perhaps many more websites will create 3D anaglyph images and hopefully, this will all snowball into an avalanche of 3d anaglyph format images on the internet.

You will probably make the most money from your blog from selling the red - cyan 3D glasses to the people in your local community who want to view your blog or website.They may then also show them to their geographically scattered friends. You will also probably make money from your community's expatriates who may contact you to order a few pairs of glasses. Additionally, as you get good at taking the 3D images, you might be able to make some extra money by contracting to do 3D images for some local couples' weddings, family events and / or for community or enterprise events.

Based upon our own experience, the targeted ads on your blog or website will probably be a small part of the money that you make from it, unless you get scads of traffic which we haven't yet been able to obtain. If you do, will you please share your secrets with us and our audience on just how you were able to accomplish it?

In case you are not aware of it, you can also utilize Google's free Analytics software to track your blog's traffic and you can also use Google's free Adsense statistics to track your blog's advertising income performance. Both of these free software services offer you plenty of education about your blog's ad revenue effectiveness and are well worth using. We will help you to incorporate these tracking tools for your blog if you ask us to.

If you utilize any of Google's free services you'll have to create a G-Mail account but it's well worth having one because, as we said earlier, you can use it for all of your internet correspondence. You can also route all of your other e-mail accounts right into it because it keeps track of which e-mail accounts received which e-mails and it allows you to label accordingly each composed e-mail as you send them out under any of your e-mail accounts. G-mail also has great spam filtering because of all of the spam reports from its immense world-wide network of users. So, all in all, it's a good move to create a g-mail account for your blog or website.

Finally, the big picture here is that like individual ants or termites who work industriously on small tasks for the overall betterment of their large colonies, we also should work diligently upon each of our blogs, viewing them as being small but very necessary components in building up the overall world-wide venue of anaglyph 3D visuals on computer screens. If and when we do this, we can be rewarded by making a few bucks while we gain the personal satisfaction of knowing that because of our small efforts on 3D's behalf, more and more people everywhere are enjoying more and more of the wonderfulness of 3D imaging.

Please proceed to May's #7 post linked in the Archive above.

4. Promoting the 3D Venue World-wide using Blogs Containing Anaglyph Format 3D Photos of Local Geographical Areas

The excellent 2009 movie Avatar which was shown in the 3D venue became a financial blockbuster as a result of being successfully marketed and shown pretty much all over the planet. Because of its great quality and good story line, it was very well received by most of the world's movie goers and many of them even went to see it more than once. We believe that the success of this movie was instrumental in fully opening the world's doors to the 3D venue!

To prove our contention, many more 3D movies have already been produced are now scheduled to be produced because of that one 3D blockbuster's huge financial success. Also, reasonably priced 3D TV's have been invented and are now biring sold in anticipation of a huge new market for 3D movies and 3D sports broadcasts because ESPN is going to broadcast sporting events in 3D this year (2010). So more and more people are looking forward to seeing more and more things in 3D.

Unfortunately however, as a result of all of this success in the top quality, polarized and shutter glass 3D formats, most of the world's people are not aware that the anaglyph 3D format is still available by which to inexpensively and relatively easily create and / or view 3D images. So they expect that all 3D screens will require the same polarized or shutter glasses with which they were provided at the movie theaters where Avatar was shown.

Anaglyph format 3D imaging however, does not employ the movie's polarized or shutter glasses but instead requires the red - cyan (blue) lensed 3D glasses.They can also be converted and viewed in the new Piku - Piku format from start3d.com. The Fujifilm 3D camera that we are here promoting to create anaglyph images is also far, far less expensive than are the professional 3D cameras that were used to take Avatar's 3D images. So anaglyph imaging is much less expensive to create and easier to view on computers and tablets and therefore, though it was not used to make that movie, the anaglyph format is becoming more and more popular.

An educational effort to make people aware of and to promote the anaglyph format of the 3D venue is now needed in order to make it universal and we believe that that's best done by utilizing the 3DStart.com Piku - Piku viewing service that does not require 3D glasses! Why? Because when we display those photos along with twin anaglyph format photos of the same thing it inspire our audience to want to also view those anaglyph format photos (and videos). So we are using 3D-Chicago.com to begin our world-wide marketing effort to sell pairs of the red - cyan colored glasses. This blog is one more attempt to do market our red -cyan 3D glasses and we're hoping that it will prompt some other bloggers to also do something similar.

In our opinion the more bloggers touting, displaying and explaining the Piku - Piiku and the anaglyph 3D formats to the world, the better! And we recommend that some might even want to try the same financing methods that we are using to support our efforts here to support their own blogging efforts. We are working to finance ourselves with revenue from targeted Google ads embedded within our blog and our website along with selling the red - cyan 3D glasses.

Please feel free to contact me, Jim Hanson at 773-908-5448 any day between 7 and 10 pm CST and I will share with you exactly what we are doing to try to finance our efforts so that you too can do similarly. You might not get rich at this 3D blogging or with a 3D website but over time the value of your copyrighted 3D photos might make it worth your while to expend the effort to create, display and save them.

Strange as it may seem, we want everyone to succeed who is pursuing this endeavor of educating the public on 3D and then marketing the red - cyan 3D glasses.Then, not only our blog and website, but hopefully many, many other blogs and websites will begin to display 3D Piku - Piku and anaglyph images. After all, 3D images really are a much better way to show people, places and events to people than 2D images can ever be!

Please proceed to May's #5  post linked in the Archive above.

3. Finding and / or creating good 3D Images.

During our extended internet searches we surprisingly found that there are many, many websites where stereoscopic 3D anaglyph images are already on display. Unfortunately, within most of the sites where we found them, the quality of the 3D imaging that was present was rather poor and unsatisfying and sorting through this kind of stuff was somewhat depressing and time consuming.

A poor quality stereoscopic 3D image in our opinion is just as bad as an out-of-focus 2D image! It's pretty much useless because it's just so frustrating to look at and it's irritating for the eyes to behold. Personally, we'd rather have no image at all to view than a bad 3D image. I'm sure that most of you will agree with this opinion.

So we tout our 3d-chicago.com website and our new 3d-negril.com website to you to see how we have done it. Also on this blog, in our left margin (down a ways), there are links to some good 3D stuff that we've so far found in our searches of the internet. These are the kinds of 3D shots that you can really enjoy! They have everything right because of the 3D correct manner in which they were taken. Good 3D still photos show folks as miniature people and they are truly a feast to the eyes, aren't they? They sure are to us! So enjoy those that we've found!


Creating 3D Images using the Fujifilm 3D camera - 

The Importance of Good Lighting 

Good 3D imaging, like all imaging, first and foremost requires good lighting. This is something for which the 3D imager must watch for or plan ahead for. Poor lighting makes the 3D images dark and depressing to view. This is especially true since the anaglyph photos are further darkened by the red - cyan glasses which must be used to focus and view them. The two effects of adequate / inadequate lighting can be both seen in the photo below.

If you look off in the distance where the late in the day lighting is excellent, that part of the photo is brilliant. But in the foreground the fact that it is nearly dusk causes the ground lighting to be not so good in the shade, consequently the images are dull. This effect is not as bad in a Piku - Piku 3D display as it is in an anaglyph image.

Look at the same photo below in this anaglyph version through your red - cyan glasses (click the photo twice for full screen) and you will really see how the glasses darkening effect further detracts from the light in the foreground of the shot.

Because of the brilliant background of downtown Chicago in this photo, it is still an acceptable shot. However, in our opinion darkness in parts of images is normally a turn off and we recommend against shooting them if you possibly can because you will rarely be satisfied with the way that they view.

The following are photos where the lighting was poor and so was the background so the shots were not acceptable to us....

The above photo has too much foreground and background darkness. The background needs lighting to illuminate it better and although the subjects faces came out ok, the foreground darkness in their clothing did not reflect the camera's flash adequately to distinguish them from the background darkness.

In the above photo, the sunlight from the back door overcame the foreground interior lighting, thus  darkening it. The foreground light might have been adequate had the back door been closed or had there been more foreground lighting.

In the above photo the white objects in the left foreground sucked up most of the light from the flash leaving the back area of the scene way too dark.

In the above photo, once again a light foreground object sucked the light away from the dark person a little behind it.

To further make our point about the effect of really good lighting for 3D, Here's a shot of an outdoor scene in good afternoon light.

Notice the ultra-white carriage and the black horse. Neither of them are affecting the scene's lighting in any way and every image in the photo is quite clear. This can be especially seen in the anaglyph photo of the scene.

Finding 3D Images on the Internet

Now please click through to this very nice 3D photo from Wikimedia of a Persian restaurant. This photo was taken with excellent indoor lighting -

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PersianEthnicRestaurantAnaglyph.jpg

You might notice that in this shot there is no outside window light entering the room to aid the ceiling lights. The scene is only lit up by about a half a dozen or so bright ceiling lights of the same magnitude that bathe the whole room in luminosity. This results in a totally bright and airy image that aids in producing an excellent 3D effect and diminishes ghosting.

If the lighting is not strong enough and / or -  the single light source is in front of you and not behind you or overhead of you - you should not take the shot! Poor lighting or lighting from in front of you can detract from the image's desired 3D effect - PERIOD! Good Lighting is half of the battle to taking good 3D shots.

The wonderful thing about the Fujifilm 3D camera is that you can immediately view the photo you just shot on its back-screen in order to see how the shot's lighting affects each dimension layer in it. You'll tell right away if the photo or video needs to be re-shot in better lighting or not.

The Importance of Camera Stabilization when Taking 3D  Video Images

It is best to keep your 3D camera stabilized during all video shooting to avoid blurring a photo or to not have the camera bounce effect found in so many poor quality 3D videos. And with your 3D video camera do not much pan around, zoom in and out or move about when shooting, unless you can do it very, very slowly so that the camera's movement is as imperceptible as possible in the video. This is because when the images are viewed, people's eyes will begin to strain and play tricks on them as they see too much 3D action taking place all at once and they'll back off from viewing the video. Movement by the subjects in the video (but not the background) is all that the eyes and the mind can deal with in order to enjoy the 3D effect in a video.

The following video exemplifies this well. Its first part shows scenes where there is a lot of camera movement  and here this detracting effect upon the scene and upon its 3D quality can be easily observed. However, in the last 1/3 of the video, there is a better scene where the camera stays stable while the actors are still quite active and moving around quite a bit within its frame.



In our opinion the excessive movement at the beginning of this video takes away from the potentially pleasing 3D effect of its scenes. We feel that the camera movement did not enhance them at all whereas the steady, stable camera in the last 1/3 of this video made the same kind of action scene so much easier to visually enjoy.

As a matter of fact, some action scenes can even be best taken as mere still photos and not as videos at all! Stills allow the viewer's eyes to take their time, feasting upon everything that is within that particular still photo's particular 3D scene. A case in point is found when you click through to this Flickr page....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danjacob/4497218212/

Here you can lavish your eyes upon all of the implied action in this amazing scene even though it is being presented to you in a still photo! Here you can really enjoy seeing the beauty of this athlete's efforts which are shown at various in and out-of-screen depths in this amazingly well done 3D shot. The volleyball is a bit difficult to focus but if you hone in on it for a moment, it becomes very clear. By the way, this particular 3D shot was created from an original 2D image using Photo Shop layering tools! That's right, it was made from a 2D image!

If you want to know more about this cameraman's wizardry with Photo Shop, go back to it and follow through to his website where he will show you the many time consuming steps that he has to take in Photo Shop to convert 2D images into amazing 3D images like this one. We will not be going into the technical depths of this kind of work here on this blog but we wanted to make you aware that this kind of technology does exist, just in case you weren't aware of it and you might be interested in it.

Below is a video which we took moving the camera very slowly to view over 180 degrees of scenery. We stabilized it by hand. We did not use a tripod which can give better results but is not always available when pointing and shooting. 





3D Depth Perception Inside and Outside of the Flat Photo / Video Panel

One of the most amazing features of 3D shots is that their scenes can not only appear to go deep into a flat panel but portions of it can also appear to pop right out of the front of it! This effect was well shown in the 3D photo linked above and it is also well shown in the following video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHG2IWV1caE

Notice that the bullet casings being ejected from the automatic rifle in this action video appear to be ejecting right into your lap! This is the kind of effect that allows us to boast that stereoscopic 3D is the most realistic imaging available on flat screens! And this is one of the reasons that why we want to use this blog to help promote the 3D venue on the internet. It's too bad that it can only be displayed on You Tube in 360p mode because 720p or 1080p would have minimized or eliminated the shots ghosting.


Establishing your shots with depth in mind

Photo shots with obvious depth are what is most desirable in 3D. So look for scenes where there is something or someone in the foreground and in the mid ground and in the far ground and into the distance so that the 3D depth effect is most powerful. For example, observe the composition of this scene....

Notice the setting stretches way off into the distance and the 3D effect is very good all the way there. The car in the foreground makes this all happen in this shot.

Here's another example of this where the fence really gets the depth effect going....

And finally, here's an example of good 3D depth in a smaller enclosed area where the objects on the left and the right lead the eyes to the cook in the center and then on past him to the objects on the back wall of the kitchen....

Extending things out from the screen

The following are some shots of things that appear to come right out of the screen in their anglyph versions viewed through red - cyan glasses but they do not appear to come out in the Piku - Piku versions.

These photos show this difference in the 2 technologies. Also, in the Piku - Piku photo below the right side post appears as it goes in and out of the shot but it doesn't even appear in the anaglyph version. This is one of the kinds of partial photo distortion that are still in the Piku - Piku display process. Hopefully, the inventor will soon improve this minor flaw.

Notice in this nice shot the capture of the  lady's beautiful smile and also the bag being extended by her appears to come right out of the screen.

This Piku - Piku photo below shows this gentleman extending a bottle of drinking water to the screen but its anaglyph version shows it coming right out of the screen.

 
















Color distortion because of the Use of Color Filtering Glasses

One of the flaws of the anaglyph images is that viewing them through special colored glasses will diminish some of the images colors. For instance, let's take this fire engine red convertible automobile.

Now look at it below through your red - cyan 3D glasses.

The color difference is amazing, isn't it? Instead of being a brilliant, vibrant red the car's now colored kind of a dull charcoal! This is a major flaw in using the anaglyph format for 3D images and it is one of the big reasons that it stays the POOR MAN'S 3D. Polarized 3D such as that used in the movie Avatar solves this problem but compared to anaglyph it is expensive to produce.

The Best of Both 3D Photo Display Worlds

By displaying both the Piku - Piku wiggling images and the anaglyph still images side by side (or one above the other as we are doing here), viewers can observe the better points of each format by matching their impressions of their display of the photo. A comparative analysis of them both  in a nutshell would be....

....the anaglyph images advantages are that they can be expanded to full screen and they show really good layers of depth but their disadvantages are that viewers need special glasses to focus and view them with some shots showing things as though they are cardboard cut-outs standing in the scene with their faces jutting out. Also, some of the photo's colors (especially red) can be lost or dimmed.

....the Piku - Piku images advantages are that without any need of glasses, you can see a lot of the photo's 3D effect and all of its colors display very well but their disadvantages are that their depth display is limited and as they twitch, sometimes things distort slightly within them. Also, viewers cannot expand them to full screen.

Please proceed to May's #4 post linked in our left margin Archive.

2. Stereoscopic 3D images are marvelous to behold when they are done well which makes them unmatchable as a means by which to display the reality of things on a flat screen.

Our contention that 3D's depth presentation is unmatchable for great imaging is proven by the military's universal use of 3D for many, many years in their extremely critical aerial reconnaissance missions. Even on NASA's website, we are presented with anaglyph 3D images of objects in distant space as well as some of the surface of the moon, Mars and even 3D images of our sun!

3D imaging is truly a wonder to behold but bear in mind that it is a TOTAL ILLUSION!

The depth found within 3d images is an illusory trick that is played upon the brain's visual cortex through the eyes. So called 3D images create an illusory simulation of unlimited depth being present within a physically flat screen as well as coming out from it. This illusion of in & out of screen depth  occurs because of a process called Stereopsis that goes on within the brain. This mental process works to make us consciously perceive 2 slightly offset images (of a particular place / event) that have been simultaneously presented through our eyes into our brain, as being one 3 dimensional image. 

In the stereoscopic anaglyph format, through color filtration by the red and cyan (blue) lenses, one image goes through one eye and the other goes through the other and together they converge within the brain's visual cortex to be perceived there as only one image having 3 dimensional depth. With the Piku - Piku images embedded  here from START3D,  as the image twitches or wiggles back and forth on the screen, a similar illusion occurs as 11 images are timed just right in an animation which fools the brain into seeing them in 3D. However, the Piku - Piku process can only be used for photos. It is not available for stereoscopic 3D videos where the anaglyph glasses are still required.

These kinds of 3D images in the past were captured by using a single lens camera, taking 1 photo and then another one about 2.5  inches apart from the first one (horizontally) of the exact same scene very quickly after it. But now with the advent of the Fujifilm 3D camera, the 2 images can be simultaneously captured by this camera's two lenses  because they are automatically synchronized to shutter at exactly the same time. The distance apart for its two lenses (of 2.5 inches on the face of the camera) is the same as the human eyes distance apart from one another within the human skull.

There are other stereoscopic 3D formats and equipment and their appropriate glasses of other colors than red - cyan but they cannot be interchanged with the red-cyan anaglyph format. Neither can the very expensive 3D movie display equipment be interchanged with the anaglyph format because it requires more expensive polarized shutter-glasses for viewing its high quality 3D images. So you can't use the glasses that you brought home from the movies or that come with the new 3D TV's to view anaglyph format images on your computer.

Below, (if you view this photo without red-cyan colored glasses) is an example of this double colored and offset image effect on your flat computer screen. This particular photo was taken when I (on the left) and Al (my e-brother from God sent to work with me to build websites) on the right were inspecting our computer screen at the exciting moment when we finally got our inexpensive little 3D Minoru web-cam to perfectly focus in upon us.

Eureka! By Jove old man, I think we've got it!

For you to view this image in 3D, you will of course need to wear a pair of red-cyan colored lens glasses (similar to those which we are wearing in the photo above to see ourselves in 3D on our computer screen).  We will be happy to ship some of these glasses to you (see comment on glasses in the left margin) as you will need them to get the most out of this blog and you will also  need them any place else on the internet that displays stereoscopic anaglyph images. This red-cyan (blue), color-filtered, stereoscopic anaglyph format is the format that has become most prevalent for inexpensive 3D on the internet and therefore most prevalent for 3D images that are being uploaded onto the internet.

The better quality professional 3D video cameras which use different polarizations instead of different colors to separate images to the brain start at a cost of over $20,000 each!

Such equipment is well beyond the range of affordability of most amateurs like ourselves. They are primarily used by professionals and/or the very well-to-do to make their 3D movies and/or videos for their new, expensive 3D LCD televisions which project excellent 3D images. Less expensive 3d camcorders have come out for the 3D LCD TV's and for computers with expensive 3D gaming screens but they require expensive glasses also, so they still won't be desirable for the average person using the  internet.


Anaglyph stereoscopic 3D images on the other hand, can be viewed on any screen on any device that will project their double images. This includes most all computers and tablets today including the new 3D LCD screened computers and TV's (but of course they will not project the superior quality of the polarized images for which their screens were specially designed ad can only be viewed with expensive glasses).

Yet if you observe the quality on your computer screen of the 3D anaglyph photo above, you will see that when one is taken correctly (as this one was), even on an ultra-inexpensive camera like this $50 Minoru webcam, your computer will allow it to turn out to be darn decent 3D!

In our opinion, the ability to now view 3D images on computer screens without the need for any glasses is really a great boon for the advancement of the 3D anaglyph format.

An image like the one above can now  be entered and Piku - Piku processed on the START3D.com website for 3D viewing in two different ways. First, a left eye and a right eye JPEG image may be entered right on their website's photo loader for them to use to create their Piku - Piku image. Or second,  you may download the MPO images right from the Fujifilm camera or its memory card into your computer and then upload them from there onto START3D.com to be Piku- Piku processed.

Once a photo is Piku - Piku processed (each one takes about 3 minutes) and put into an album, START3D gives you its embed code which can then be placed into a blog's or into a website's HTML code so that the 3D image can be viewed there without any glasses (as you have been doing here on this blog). The twitching of the image is necessary to the illusion of depth that it induces because it is very rapidly entering 11 images into your eyes!

It is not perfect 3D but we feel that it is decent enough to entice our viewers to want to see more of them. We then hope that our viewers might want to go on and view our matching anaglyph format 3D photos (with the required red-cyan glasses) so that they can expand them into full screen mode for best 3D viewing.

Please proceed to the May #3 post linked in our left margin Archive.