RADIO BERKSHIRE 29th APRIL 2009 - HENRY KELLY 11am
SUBJECT - 3D PHOTOGRAPHY - IAN HUNTLY FROM EARLEY
62 years involvement with TT Races Isle of Man.
I write articles for a number of websites about the TT.
01/ 2009 is 50th Anniversary of Honda, the Japanese Motorcycle Company, making their first visit to Europe. Reason. They felt that by participating in the Isle of Man TT they could draw attention to themselves so help to start selling motorcycles on this side of the world. The TT was a championship race in those days so any success whatsover would gain useful publicity. They didn't win but they took back to Japan the Manufacturers team prize. They returned in 1960, finishing on the leader boards but also brought Suzuki to Europe. 1961 saw Yamaha and even more Japanese motorcycle companies such as Kawasaki, Tohatsu and Bridgestone appearing in the TT. Honda won the 1961 125cc and 250cc TT and then it all took off. The British motorcycle industry went down the plughole !
02/ My project for 2009 is to look back to 1959 to see what was happening in those far off days. So I went up into my loft which contains research material or rubbish as my wife calls it but represents 62 years of my own TT interest and involvement.
03/ I found my file of 1959 souvenirs and information which helped me to draft out an article or two. However in this file was a subfile in which was a pack of magazines and booklets from Picture Post and comics including EAGLE, each with a pair of cardboard specs, left lens red/ right lens cyan blue. The booklets were photographs of jets and cars of the day and views of London etc. When one looked through the specs at what appeared to be fuzzy pictures, they leapt into 3 dimensions.
04/ So I decided to try to go back 50 years and make some 3D pictures for the 2009 TT websites. I did a bit of internet surfing and found how it was done in the early days with "box brownies" then with 35mm cameras and it was easy to adapt it all for our modern day digital cameras.
05/ I had a neat camera in my collection. a Fuji E550 which has a large release button on the top so I looked on e-bay for another one which I was able to get quite cheaply. The large release buttons help to fire off the cameras simultaneously....
06/ I then found a short strip of dural 28cms long which is strong but light,. I drilled two holes 11cms apart which distance represents the distance apart of the irises of a humans eyes. To the bracket was added a piece of plastic filing edge to hold the camers in parallel and that was the first hurdle overcome.
07/ Then I surfed the internet to find a download to produce 3D pics and found "STEREO PHOTO MAKER" by Suto and Sykes which I have used to produce my pictures. The first lot were 2D3D using photographs I had taken normally but by using this technique I could create pictures of depth so it look like you were looking into the picture.
08/ Once I had this working I went out with my dual cameras and took pictures of anything - trolleys outside ASDA, mylocal pub, my house, my garden. I processed them when I arrived home. One downloads the left camera onto desktop and call the folder "LEFT". Similarly the right camera is downloaded and named "RITE" using four letters to match left.
09/ Then I used the STEPHAN part of STPHMKRE and created the left pic and then the right as red/cyan anaglyphs so one pic had a red ring and ther a blue one.
The system then combines the two photos into one with the edges fuzzy. When you look through the specs the picture appears in 3D !!! Little adjustment can be made if required then the finished picture is saved to desktop given a suitable name *.jpg.
10/ Then the website was set up, firstly with my experimental 2D3D pics.
MY FIRST EXPERIMENTS
I added the first batch of TRUE3D pics so now I am ready to take the photos I want when I get to the Isle of Man. I can process them all while I am there and will be uploading a batch each day.
POSSIBLE USES.
USE BY ESTATE AGENTS TO DEMONSTRATE HOUSES IN 3D
USE IN ACCIDENT ASSESSMENT AND ACCIDENT REPAIRS
USE IN ENGINEERING TO DEMONSTRATE PARTS OR WHOLE OF ENGINES
HOLIDAY SNAPS COULD HAVE AN ADDED VALUE
ALL YOU NEED ARE TWO CAMERAS, A LAPTOP OR PC, A DOWNLOADED PROGRAMME AND 3D SPECS !
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