The "Stereo Shuffle"

[RLangham]

Has anyone here had any good results taking stereo pairs (one after the other) with a regular 35mm? I've been wanting to try this forever; did it with an iPhone camera once upon a time and liked the results. Show us any good pictures you took this way, and I'll report back when I've tried it!

 

[r_a_feldman]

I do stereo pairs with an Olympus Pen FT. The portrait-format orientation of the Pen FT works well for stereo pairs. There is no need to crop the negatives and I also use adjacent frames.

edit:
I have scanned and inverted some of my negatives, which are attached. The originals are on Ilford Delta 100, digitized with a Fujifilm X-E5 and Olympus Zuiko 50mm macro on a bellows copy stand with LED illumination.

I should note that all the shots are hand-held. I pick a center point for reference and shift from left to right about 8-12 inches between shots, keeping the center point aligned and trying not to rotate the camera.

I generally view them cross-eyed, though I do have an old Leitz viewer for aerial photo pair prints.

 

[outwest]

Out West we called it the Aztec two-step for some unknown reason but we actually just shifted our weight from one foot to the other to get the about 70 mm separation of our eyes.

 

[RLangham]

I do stereo pairs with an Olympus Pen FT. The portrait-format orientation of the Pen FT works well for stereo pairs. There is no need to crop the negatives and I also use adjacent frames.

edit:
I have scanned and inverted some of my negatives, which are attached. The originals are on Ilford Delta 100, digitized with a Fujifilm X-E5 and Olympus Zuiko 50mm macro on a bellows copy stand with LED illumination.

I should note that all the shots are hand-held. I pick a center point for reference and shift from left to right about 8-12 inches between shots, keeping the center point aligned and trying not to rotate the camera.

I generally view them cross-eyed, though I do have an old Leitz viewer for aerial photo pair prints.

View attachment 423712View attachment 423713View attachment 423714View attachment 423715View attachment 423716View attachment 423717View attachment 423718

Oh, very nice!

 

[RLangham]

Out West we called it the Aztec two-step for some unknown reason but we actually just shifted our weight from one foot to the other to get the about 70 mm separation of our eyes.

Tried this with phone camera today and was very pleased with the result! I would never have thought of that myself. Will try it with Leica or Exa soon.

 

[r_a_feldman]

…we actually just shifted our weight from one foot to the other to get the about 70 mm separation of our eyes.

I realize that I am moving sideways more than needed. I really should put the camera on a tripod and experiment to see if ~3” that you use gives a better 3D effect than 6”, 9” or 12”.

 

[RLangham]

I realize that I am moving sideways more than needed. I really should put the camera on a tripod and experiment to see if ~3” that you use gives a better 3D effect than 6”, 9” or 12”.

Well, consider... you can exaggerate the depth by increasing the separation. Also, the longer the focal length, the more separation is needed.

The old Belplasca/Stereo Realist/Delta Stereo format used frames of about 24x23mm in portrait orientation on 35mm film, with the lens centers separated by about the normal human distance of ~3". Realist has 35mm lenses, which by my math is equivalent to about a 58mm lens on full frame 35mm. A little long but basically a normal lens. So for a 90mm lens on full frame, maybe 4" or 5"? For 35mm on full frame, maybe more like 2.5"? These are just guesses.

I find the effect from the Realist pleasing but I also find your stereo pairs above pleasing. It seems some exaggeration may enhance the effect, since we are viewing these images at less than life-size. The Realist et al. also have to shoot on physical film with predetermined dimensions; so there are only just so many valid solutions to that problem.

Randall Munroe talked about putting cameras facing up at either end of a football field to view the clouds (which are normally at infinity) in stereo. But I think it was more a setup for a "looked at clouds from both sides now" pun than something he actually did.

 

[outwest]

The best way I use a tripod is with a focusing rack turned sideways for exact separation.

 

[RLangham]

The best way I use a tripod is with a focusing rack turned sideways for exact separation.

That’s very interesting. A macro focusing rack?

I know Ernst Leitz made a dedicated two-shot stereo rack that kept the camera straight and the separation correct. I want to say it was requested by the Israeli government but I have no idea if that’s true or what their use case for it was.

 

[r_a_feldman]

I have a 200mm-long Arca quick release plate that I would use and just slide the plate sideways in the tripod head bracket. However, I prefer just hand holding the camera.

 

[RLangham]

Was going to post some that I did with my new old Leica, but it seems I don’t have the technique quite down. I’ll see how they crop but it turns out that a slight change in light conditions between the two shots is very noticeable.

Just loaded one of the Stereo Realists that another member gave me years ago, and if I get anything good from that I’ll post it too.