Stereo Pairs (just a bit of Fun!)

[Astro]

Lockdown over here is pretty tight so have not been wandering anywhere other than my garden for two months now.

I photograph the moon, more or less obsessively, and when the skies are clear I do my best with astrophotography in a very light polluted city!

I got a Canon R about a year ago and given its performace, I switched to mirrorless completely before Chistmas, replacing my Canon 5Dsr with the Canon R5.

The Nebula image below was taken on the EOS R, attached to my 6" refractor, and the moon shot using the EOS R5 with the new 800mm R lens Canon have just brought out.

I created a false stereo pair for each image creating a duplicate with slightly different contrast and colour tones.

To see the stereo effect the trick is to slowly cross your eyes as you look at the pair and the stereo effect comes as a third image in the center as your vision comes into focus. With a little practice it gets easy to do.

they are probably best seen if downloaded from Flikr (click on the link) and then displayed full screen.

My grand nephews (7 and 5) are fascinated by them...

In any event I had fun putting them together


#1 Orion Nebula (Jan 9 2021)
M42 Jan 9 (SP 1a) by James Edwards, on Flickr[/IMG]

#2 Moon (Jan 21 2021)
Moon Jan21 (SP) by James Edwards, on Flickr[/IMG]

#3 Moon (Jan 23 2021)
Moon Jan23 (SP) by James Edwards, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Wavelength]

Nebula image is awesome.....

[Manfred M]

Intersting James. The impact of post-processing difference between the left and right images is most evident in the coloured version where the colours add to the effect. The process reminds me a bit of when I did a lot of scuba diving; wearing a contact lens in one eye to correct for presbyopia (age related farsightedness) so that I could read my dive computer and a different toric lens in the other eye to correct for astigmatism. It felt really weird when I first put them in, but after a few minutes the brain compensated and things looked normal. The cross-eyed looking at the images is somewhat similar and as you point out, it gets easier with practice.

You are right; opening the images in a browser and then going into full-screen mode to get rid of the tabs and other related screen information makes this a lot easier.

My one question is about the white borders. They seem to be a bit of a help (lets us more easily know when the cross-eyed framing is "right", but once that happens, it is a distraction against the dark background. I bet one of those stereo-graphic topographic map viewers would be really good to view them with.

[Astro]

Manfred, I agree about the border, though with practice it does get easier to 'ignore' the real images.

I used to drive my late wife wild back in the day. She loved puzzle books and used to get very frustrated with 'spot the difference' paired pictures/drawings. I could always find the differences with a glance. It was years before she spotted me crossing my eyes... once the stereo pair formed, anomalies are obvious (they kind of shimmer).

It was doing one with my grand nephew that sparked me to think about trying for a false effect with two images that were slightly different.
And you are right about the stronger effect with colour.
I think I will see about getting a stereo-graphic map viewer.
I have often downloaded fits images generated via the ESA/Hubble space telescope. Essentially they are monochrome images captured using specific filters for colour (IR /UV /radio etc). Processing them into false colour and then blending is relatively easy, though getting a 'pleasing' synthesis can be a bit more interesting.

Creating two differently coloured images and then viewing them in a stereoscope should be a lot easier on the eyes, but I would probably need to reduce the size of a printed pair.
Will be an interesting puzzle to determine optimum sizes for prints viewed through the stereoscope. (The printed versions of the images I posted are A3 and the comfortable viewing distance seems to be about arms length, more or less the same distance from me when I display them on my 27" Benq monitor.

Now to ffind and order a viewer......

[Cantab]

So far I'm not very good at crossing my eyes but will work on it!

[selig1656]

Terrific captures and how you present them should be a personal decision as to what you are trying to create.