Shooting stereoscopic 3D images usually means breaking out a cool old film camera like the one used here, but this $30 eBay find from 1950 can make shooting 3D images on your DSLR as easy as shooting a regular 2D still.
Actual 3D footage can be a pain, both to capture and to watch, which is why we fell in love with this super simple technique when we ran across it. It turns out, all you have to do to turn a normal photo or animated GIF into a 3D experience is add a couple of white bars...
For a while now, researchers have been trying to remove two things from 3D photos and video: the glasses and the second lens. Some companies have made headway in the area -- think of Samsung's single-lens 3D technology and Panasonic's special single-lens 3D sensor -- but some new research out of Harvard offers a software-based alternative.
3D modeling for movies and video games is often done using lasers. The modeler scans whatever it is they are trying to reconstruct using a laser and then ends up spending a good bit of time cleaning up the results in post. In contrast, a new method developed by the folks at Disney Zurich promises to generate much more accurate results by replacing the lasers with photos.
Remember the old ViewMaster toys? All you had to do was put in one of the special cartridges and you could go "sightseeing" in 3D. A new invention by entrepreneurs Ethan Lowry and Joe Heitzeberg harkens back to the old ViewMaster days, only instead of a cartridge, you have your iPhone -- and instead of just viewing 3D content, now you can capture it as well!
Creating a 3D scan of an object can be done several different ways. We've seen everything from long distance laser cameras and hacked Kinects used to great effect. Computer engineer Giancarlo Todone's take on creating a 3D reconstruction takes another approach: using focus stacking.
A team of researchers at the University of Glasgow's School of Physics and Astronomy just published a paper in Science that details how they managed to use an altered style of "ghost imaging" photography to create accurate three-dimensional images.