It's true! People have been doing it for years. It is so simple to take the shots that I regularly do most of my snapshots this way. Maybe I can get a few of you to try it.
The "cha-cha" or "side-step" method of taking stereo pairs.
1. Stand as you would normally to take a photo.
2. Take the photo, but don't move your body or the camera afterwords.
3. Holding the camera level and at the same level and angle as the first shot, you can
a. lean about 3" (INCHES not feet) to the right
b. shuffle your feet to the right
c. cha-cha to the right
4. Shoot a second photo of the same subject.
That's it! ALWAYS move to the right so you can easily determine which view is the left view.
How do you view your stereo pair (3-D photo)?
There are three fairly easy ways. Walleye, Crosseye, and Anaglyph. Each has good and bad points.
1. Walleye. Use your software to make a pair of on-screen images. The images should each be about 2" to 2.5" WIDE, and placed tightly together with the left eye image on the left, the right eye image on the right.
To view the 3-D (if you are nearsighted remove your glasses) Place your hand in front of your nose, between your eyes, with three fingers vertical. Close your right eye. Move your fingers so you only see the left eye image with the left eye. Now open the right eye and close the left eye. Twist your fingers so that the right eye only sees the right eye image. Check back and forth until each eye only sees the proper image.
Now comes that hard part, especially if you are farsighted. Open BOTH eyes, relax the eye muscles, and try to visually merge the images into a single image. Your eye muscles may complain a lot the first few times you do this. What you are doing is forcing the eyes to focus outward. If a 2.5" image is too hard to merge, start with two images only 1" wide each, and work up to the larger images over a few days. This is the hardest way to view, BUT if you master it, you can freeview any and all of the old stereocards that went in your grandparents stereo viewer. You won't need the viewer! You can also freeview many stereo pairs printed in magazines or online, and the size will appear full scale.
2. Crosseye. With crosseye viewing, you can make the images quite a bit larger than 2.5" wide. When you mount them or place them side-by-side, the RIGHT image goes on the LEFT, and visa versa.
To view, hold both hand up in front of you and block the left eye from seeing the left image, and the right eye from seeing the right image. Now cross your eyes slowly and wait for the image to pop into focus. This again will stretch your eye muscles. Farsighted and normal sighted people find this easier that walleye viewing, but many nearsighted people have difficulty with it.
3. Anaglyph. Get out those red/blue or red/cyan glasses. You can look on the net for a free program called anabuilder, or use photoshop or image editing software. The full details on how to do this properly get way too long to describe here, but in photoshop the essence is:
Place a copy of the right image on the screen.
Remove the red channel
Place a copy of the left image on top of that image
Remove the blue and green channels
Set the opacity of the top image to 50%
Align the two images so that the primary subject as the images exactly overlapping
Copy the merged image and paste it into a new blank image
Select the curves tool and bring the right slider to the left until the dark image has the proper coloration and white levels.
Tweak as needed.
Post to the net.
Anaglyphs do not work well with bright red or red-orange subject matter, as the filters create an effect called retinal rivalry. For summer, spring and winter nature scenes this isn't a problem. Once you have viewed a number of anaglyphs, your brain can become retrained to see the full original colors, and if the images are correctly level and overlapping the correct amount, eyestrain will go away quickly. Anaglyphs can be any size, and can give a real feeling of presence at the scene.
Here is a cha-cha anaglyph image I made of the DeSoto Falls dam in northern Alabama.
Have fun playing around.
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