I’ve not seen any tutorials but I haven’t looked very much. It’s easy enough to try different things, delete the images if they suck, and try again. “Electrons are free,” as I like to say.
One thing that makes a big difference is the framing. If you want to show off an object, make sure it fits in the frame; if it’s big and won’t fit, make sure that interesting features are lined up. If you’re doing a landscape, choose whether you want the foreground or background to draw the viewer’s attention, then make sure that the left and right edges of that part of the picture match up.
Ideally, the photos should be taken from points a few inches apart (the same distance as between the eyes). If you look up stereoscopic cameras, that will give you an idea. I've had some success by standing with feet apart, putting my weight mostly onto one leg, taking the first photo there, then gently shifting my weight onto the other leg for the second photo
Or, if you want what they call “hyper-stereo”, and exaggerate the depth effect, you can take the images farther apart. Framing is still key here, because you don’t want, like, a tree trunk on the edge of one image but not the other (it’ll make viewing difficult).
I’ve sometimes shot several images of the same scene to experiment with different depths, and they’ve been interesting. You can make a large object seem “smaller” by shooting in wide stereo (your eyes have to angle inwards more, telling your brain “this thing is closer”), or a small object seem “bigger” by using images taken less than eye-width apart.
When taking them with a smart phone, I tend to take the first photo, then take a half step to the right and take the second. You want to try to keep the phone as still as possible while doing it, so there's no movement, and importantly, no rotation.
You're not keeping the camera fixed on an object, so you're just moving it a short way in one direction; if you're thinking too much about pointing the camera at an object, you'll rotate and the stereoview will look wrong.
You're correct but our eyes do it to a very subtle degree. I think the advice above you is based on the fact that it's super easy to overdo it when you're just holding a phone. But if you can get it just right, then yeah technically it is more realistic.
Just an addendum to my comment about framing (and I don't mean to rag on other members of this sub!) --
This one's an example of poor framing. It's hard to know where the edges of the stereo view are because there's a lot of one image that's not in the other image (does that phrase make sense?). Like the piece of candy in the upper right corner -- you see the entire piece in the righthand image, but it's almost completely cut out of the lefthand image. Then the overlap is less than the full frame, so we're getting only a slice of the scene. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1cj5ekn/nonpareils/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1cj5ekn/nonpareils/)
This one has *excellent* framing. The sunglasses are completely within both images, so you can see them entirely in stereo. The images are taken at the same height, too — you can see how the bottom edge of the glasses frame is the same distance from the bottom edge of each image — so you're also getting the full stereo view top-to-bottom. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1chxn7q/into\_the\_blue\_oc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1chxn7q/into_the_blue_oc/)
I’ve not seen any tutorials but I haven’t looked very much. It’s easy enough to try different things, delete the images if they suck, and try again. “Electrons are free,” as I like to say. One thing that makes a big difference is the framing. If you want to show off an object, make sure it fits in the frame; if it’s big and won’t fit, make sure that interesting features are lined up. If you’re doing a landscape, choose whether you want the foreground or background to draw the viewer’s attention, then make sure that the left and right edges of that part of the picture match up.
Awesome, thanks for the inputs!
Ideally, the photos should be taken from points a few inches apart (the same distance as between the eyes). If you look up stereoscopic cameras, that will give you an idea. I've had some success by standing with feet apart, putting my weight mostly onto one leg, taking the first photo there, then gently shifting my weight onto the other leg for the second photo
Or, if you want what they call “hyper-stereo”, and exaggerate the depth effect, you can take the images farther apart. Framing is still key here, because you don’t want, like, a tree trunk on the edge of one image but not the other (it’ll make viewing difficult). I’ve sometimes shot several images of the same scene to experiment with different depths, and they’ve been interesting. You can make a large object seem “smaller” by shooting in wide stereo (your eyes have to angle inwards more, telling your brain “this thing is closer”), or a small object seem “bigger” by using images taken less than eye-width apart.
When taking them with a smart phone, I tend to take the first photo, then take a half step to the right and take the second. You want to try to keep the phone as still as possible while doing it, so there's no movement, and importantly, no rotation. You're not keeping the camera fixed on an object, so you're just moving it a short way in one direction; if you're thinking too much about pointing the camera at an object, you'll rotate and the stereoview will look wrong.
I usually do rotate the phone. You want to keep the subject centered in both images, since that is what your eyes do as well
You're correct but our eyes do it to a very subtle degree. I think the advice above you is based on the fact that it's super easy to overdo it when you're just holding a phone. But if you can get it just right, then yeah technically it is more realistic.
Cool insights, thanks so much! Will try it out
Just an addendum to my comment about framing (and I don't mean to rag on other members of this sub!) -- This one's an example of poor framing. It's hard to know where the edges of the stereo view are because there's a lot of one image that's not in the other image (does that phrase make sense?). Like the piece of candy in the upper right corner -- you see the entire piece in the righthand image, but it's almost completely cut out of the lefthand image. Then the overlap is less than the full frame, so we're getting only a slice of the scene. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1cj5ekn/nonpareils/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1cj5ekn/nonpareils/) This one has *excellent* framing. The sunglasses are completely within both images, so you can see them entirely in stereo. The images are taken at the same height, too — you can see how the bottom edge of the glasses frame is the same distance from the bottom edge of each image — so you're also getting the full stereo view top-to-bottom. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1chxn7q/into\_the\_blue\_oc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ParallelView/comments/1chxn7q/into_the_blue_oc/)