The Friday Fillip: 3D the Old-Fashioned Way
3D keeps coming (and going). It’s here now in the movies and threatens to poke itself (John-Candy-like) out of our TVs. It was there for a while about sixty years ago also at the movies and in the glories of Viewmaster. And just before the turn of the century before this one, stereographs or stereograms were popular, those almost double photographs that were viewed through a device that look rather like a small library card catalogue drawer.
Well stereographs have been brought back, this time by the New York Public Library, and thanks to the “miracles of modern science” you’re able to see them with their pairs of pics nearly conjoined in pretty much 3D splendour. Stereogranimator lets you create animated GIFs (pronounced “jifs”) or anaglyphs from the library’s stock of old stereograph images.
The trick is to align the two photographs such that the animation flicks back and forth between them so rapidly that you lose a sense of motion and instead see three dimensions. You can find the latest efforts from the rest of the world on the site, observing that most people do a lousy job of it: the results flicker like jumping jack flash in a truly annoying way. An anaglyph would be easier on the eye, but then you’d have to have a pair of 3D glasses at the ready—which you might. (Instructions here on how to make your own 3D glasses, if you’d like to turn this into a winter weekend project with the kids.)
I’ve tried my hand at making depth, using the waterfall picture that you see below (click on the image to enlarge). And I’ve tucked the animated GIF result away below the fold so that Slaw’s front page doesn’t strobe like a broken neon sign.
Click on image to enlarge.
Now, prepare to be amazed . . . in a mild and gentle way:
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