A stereoscope from household items
Thanks to the wheel of fashion, those of us with a penchant for vintage (what we used to call “second hand”) clothes and accessories actually lead every trend — if you wait long enough.
I introduced the Swatch to America in 1984. I liked the retro use of hands on a watch in an era dominated by those pre-LCD glowing digitals. I was also ahead of the curve on banded collars and green tea. Don’t come crying to me when you’re the only one on the block who doesn’t speak Esperanto.
Now the Hollywood buzz is all about a revival of 3-D, and this time I have published proof of my foresight.
I devised the following project for a children’s section of the Kodiak Daily Mirror (Dec. 19, 2006). I consider it by far the greatest achievement of my career in journalism.
Materials:
2 toilet paper tubes
1 pair 2.25X reading glasses
clear tape
1 business card
optional: paint or electrician’s tape
Construction:
1. As an optional improvement for opacity, you can wrap the toilet paper tubes with electrician’s tape, or paint the tubes. If you want to paint them for decoration, it might be better to do it before the other steps.
2. Pop the reading glasses lenses out of the frame. Tape a lens to one end of each of the toilet paper tubes. Call the ends of the tubes with the lens “A” and the empty ends “B”.
3. Tape the short end of the business card to the left tube about half an inch from the A end so that the card sticks up perpendicular to the inside edge of the lens (as if it were still in the glasses).
4. Tape the other short end of the business card similarly to the right tube. Now you can hold the tubes in position to put the lenses side-by-side like they were in their old reading glasses days, and the business card bends to form a bridge over your nose.
5. With the tubes held to make the bridge as in step 4, tape the inner edges of the B ends together to make the point of a V-shape.
6. Stereoscope is done. To view images, hold the viewer with the lenses up to your eyes and aim. You can adjust the viewer for the distance between your eyes by squeezing the bridge tighter or looser. When viewing, hold the image steady for a moment to let your eyes get a fix, then change the distance gradually to find the best position for the 3-D effect.
Making images:
I include some samples here from real life and some I put together from pieces. You can view them on the computer screen or print them out and make little cards. I calculated the specs so that the image to view (left and right halves taken together) is about the size of a standard playing card.
To make your own stereoviews with a camera, shoot one photo for the left image, then move the camera slightly to the right on the same horizontal plane and snap the right image. If there are people or animals in the picture, make sure they don’t move.
The distance between where the camera takes the two frames doesn’t have to be eye width. Depending on the distance to the subject and its size, you might get a better effect with a larger or smaller baseline. For example, if you shoot a building from across the road, you could try moving the camera a few feet for the second shot.
To make completely artificial stereo art, choose a background scene or pattern and place foreground objects on it (easy in Photoshop, but also possible by hand). Let that be the left image. Then copy that image, but move the foreground objects slightly left against the background to create the right image. The farther an object is moved, the more it will appear to stand out from the background, so you can place objects at different apparent depths.
Several online archives make old stereoviews available. Adjust the size on screen to about 66 percent for this homemade viewer, or you can print them out and reduce them with a copier to the right size. Mounting them on cardboard with spray glue makes them easier to use.
http://content.lib.washington.edu/stereoweb/
http://www.johnsonshawmuseum.org/
http://library.pacific.edu/ha/digital/spooner/index.asp
I am considering the design of a card holding extension for the Drewview like on the old-fashioned stereoscopes so you don’t have to hold the picture yourself.
Remember to use the awesome power of stereoscopy only for good, never for evil.
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