While the big full frame cameras have become popular for low light photography, a South African astronomer who says he’s not much of a photographer, created this gorgeous astrovideo using an Olympus E-P3 micro 4/3ds camera. Smaller frame sensors can, apparently, achieve excellent results in low light.
Category Archives: Still photography
Various new cameras to feature WiFi, Android OS and links to smart phones
At CES last January, camera makers demo’d product concept cameras that linked via Wi-Fi to apps running on smart phones. Features included the ability to route real time video from the camera to the remote smart phone, as well as remote control of the camera from the phone. Others provided ways to upload photos from the camera to online social media web sites.
A couple of camera makers will apparently soon announce cameras that have Android running inside – and enable the installation of apps from the Android app market. That also means that software developers may be able to write applications that add new features to the cameras! Yay!
Finally, there’s this item that the rumored Panasonic Lumix GH-3 will include Wi-Fi and smart phone remote capabilities, plus a new 70 Mbps video encoding mode for high quality compression. FT5 Panasonic GH3 has WiFi and remote control applications! | 43 Rumors.
#3D images using normal and very wide interaxial lens spacing
When shooting 3D images, the distance between the left and right lenses matters as it impacts both the useful depth of the image and how close your camera can be to primary objects without the objects appear to “pop out” in front of the screen.
The following photos are 3d “red/cyan” stereoscopic anaglyph images. The photos were taken using dual Lumix GH-2 cameras and processed in Stereomaker. The original 5k pixel wide images were uploaded to my video blog; click on the image to see larger image. Use your red/cyan 3D glasses to view these images.
First photo is of playground equipment using my standard 5 1/4″ interaxial spacing – that is the closest I can get the cameras together, and the lens was set to 42mm (on a micro four thirds camera that is the same as an 84mm lens on a full frame camera).
Notice that the line of trees well behind the playground equipment is all “in the distance” at the same plane. Not much 3D going on back there. This is due to the closer lens spacing.
For the following images, I used my “sliding rail” mount which is a home made mount that enables me to separate the lenses by more than 2 feet.
The effect of a wider lens separation is to create a sense of stereoscopic depth much deeper into the scene than is possible with a narrow lens separation. Think of it like this – suppose your two camera lenses (or your eyes) were on top of each other, in the exact same spot. You would not see any 3D effect as you’d have a 2D image. But move your lenses (or eyes) apart by a millimeter or two. Now you would begin to see some depth but only for objects very close to you. Distant objects would not be sufficiently different in the left and right views to give a 3D sense to them.
Now move the lenses (or your eyes) several inches or even a foot apart. The difference in the images, even at far distances, will now be noticeable.
A “normal” 3D camera might have lens spacing in the 1 and 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches range (similar to your eyes). This camera will produce useful depth at up to perhaps 200 feet. Beyond that, objects will tend to appear on a distant plane.
By increasing the interaxial base, we extend the depth into the distance. In these photos, with a long stereo baseline between the lenses, depth is extended out to easily 800 to 1,000 feet.
Why don’t we then just always use a wide lens separation? Because a wide separation has impacts on objects appearing closer to the camera. As a rough rule, the closest subjects in your scene should be about 30 times the distance between the lenses. For a 2 foot lens separation, that means the nearest objects should be at least 60 feet away.
By comparison, my normal 5 1/4″ separation enables objects down to less than 14 feet from the cameras. Consequently, lens width matters! For my Canon HF M301 video camera set up, lens spacing is 2 5/8″ and enables taking 3D images down to within about 7 feet of the subject.
In these images (some shot at 42mm m4/3ds) we still see depth at what is probably 800 to 1,000 feet. But note that I carefully avoided having anything, like a tree, appear in the foreground – it would have hurt your eyes with this lens spacing!
Related articles
Create 3D anaglyph images with 3 lines of Ruby code
Very nice summary of 3D still image concepts: Create 3D anaglyph images with 3 lines of Ruby code « saush.
And I must learn Ruby on Rails programming. Looks easy enough (I already code, just not in Ruby). It really does take just 3 lines of code to create a red/cyan anaglyph, in Ruby.
It’s not too bad in OpenGL either. And a version for Windows WPF.
Clever way to program a DSLR – by putting the code outside the camera
Inexpensive dongle interfaces between iPhone and certain Olympus and Panasonic DSLR cameras. A software app on the iPhone adds new features including time lapse, motion detection, high dynamic range controls, and other capabilities.
Does it work? E-M5 iPhone controller… | 43 Rumors.
Which camera company will be first to offer their own software development kit for a camera?