3D camera

[ffutures]

Morgans are selling a 3D digital camera for £30 - it's a Practika which to me generally means reasonably reliable but uninspired design, anyone know anything about it?

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/?page=product_detail&product=14800

Usual disclaimer - this may be cheaper elsewhere, I tend to read their ads because I used to work part time for a former incarnation of the company.

Comments

[ggreig]

Wikipedia suggests (third bullet point) that it's a clone of the DXG-5D8, which is fairly minimally reviewed here. A 3D video resolution of 640x480 sounds a bit disappointing, but it's just cheap enough that my curiosity may win out... Edit: also separation of the lenses seems at the low end of the scale. I'm guessing "ideal" would be more like the distance between your pupils.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it's probably too limited for my needs, apart from anything else I don't have a 3D TV so I'd need some way to convert the 3D output to pairs of images or red-blue images, which doesn't seem to be supported by this model.

[ggreig]

I succumbed and it arrived today. It seems like a cool toy.

A colleague found this media player/editor, which on a quick trial seems to do the job for viewing on non-3D hardware (I can't be 100% sure how good it is as I don't have 3D glasses at work, but it looks like it's doing the right thing). A tenner for the player is a no-brainer; might have to think a bit harder about whether I want an editor at £40.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Can you post a picture, say as a colour anaglyph or separated pair?

[ggreig]

I haven't played around with still images much, so don't have anything that would produce an anaglyph image - yet. Here's an image almost straight from the device though - I've scaled it up to twice the size horizontally to restore proportions, but it's otherwise untouched. (I've also applied width and height attributes to the image tag so it doesn't appear outsize on the page. It'll appear at 1/5th size, but if you "save as" you should get it full size.)



I can view this as cross-eyed 3D.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's not bad, but I think I'm going to wait until something with higher resolution comes along, that's a bit too small for my purposes.

[ggreig]

Fair enough. I'm happy with it as an intriguing toy, I don't have a proper use to put it to - though it'll be interesting to see if I can produce better images for my grandparents' stereoscope than when I tried it a few years ago by taking a step sideways between two photos! (That gave some good results and some not so good.)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Just noticed the bit about 1/5th size - feeling REALLY stupid now - tried it at full size and the results don't seem at all bad. Needs some despeckling and contrast adjustment, I think, but not horribly bad - I'm guessing the lighting wasn't wonderful?

VERY tempted now. In fact I think I'll get one - thanks for the help!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Weird thing - went to see if anyone has it cheaper, Morgans are doing it new for £25 plus postage now - or for £25 postage free if you buy it on eBay! Three guesses which I went for...

[ggreig]

Nae bother! No, lighting isn't great in our dungeon. We're on the ground floor so windows are limited and the fluorescent lighting isn't amazing.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say that there's a lot of good freeware for 3D photography here

http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/index.html

I particularly recommend Stereo Photomaker, I've used it a lot for 3D photos on the Forgotten Futures DVD.

[ggreig]

Ooh, very handy. That'll save me a lot of searching!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Might as well say, if you didn't notice it in my other posts, that having tried this camera I've decided it isn't really for me - I don't want to do 3D movies and the stills are just not good even in good light. Apologies!

[ggreig]

No apologies necessary! Lag in responding due to being away from regular Internet contact at the moment.