Getting Some 3D Glasses!

I left that Wednesday morning to see “Avatar” three times back to back.  The first showing had one of my programmer friends with me.  The second showing I had to fight to stay awake.  The third showing I met with a different friend.  All three showings were max capacity of 3D viewers and it was crazy.  So far I have seen “Avatar” in IMAX 3D four times and I planned to see it in 2D and digital 3D eventually.  I was still waiting for the hundred glasses from china to arrive and I was starting to get worried that they won’t be here on time prior to having guests over for a holiday celebration.  A paper brown package arrived and I was super excited and followed to leave positive feedback for the seller and was ready to show some 3D pictures.  I also figured that I might need more glasses in the future so I immediately placed another order for another hundred anaglyph glasses.  I now could create a CD-R or DVD-R and give the converted pictures with a pair of glasses for future 3D viewers of my 3D pictures.  I was feeling more comfortable about this 3D camera purchase and felt like I was ahead of most people that will be taking 3D pictures in the future.  It was nice to have 3D pictures of family, friends, animals, places, and various oddities.  I also starting thinking that  about a hundred years from now that 3D pictures will so easy to view that the date when picture was taken will be like having a European cell phone Within the United States two years before the cell phone explosion.  I remember as a child traveling various parts of Europe and seeing tons of people talking on little cell phones and even people were faking the action of talking on the cell phones just to look cool.  I didn’t see that happening in the states prior to going on a European adventure.  The cell phone explosion happened around the USA just a few years later and was like the same thing that I saw on my travels.  Could this happen with 3D?  Will the future cellular phones have the same style of screen that my 3D camera has?  Will it be so easy to take a 3D picture or video on the spot?  Will the News eventually go 3D?  I heard about that YouTube was supposed to get ready to do actual 3D to watch on 3D monitors, TVs or even mobile devices.  I started thinking even deeper about what was going to happen when 3D screen material becomes so cheap that it will be on walls at places that you go to visit.  Will clear acrylic screen technology be able to produce a 3D image?  All of these questions and only answers that turn out to be only speculative.  It is fun to think about but also irritating at the same time.  I guess we will eventually figure this out because it is only a matter of time.

Some more pictures!

These are some 3D anaglyph pictures from The Turkey Day Adventure and the first snow!

Before the Big Show!

The holidays were here and it was almost 2010 and I was not a hundred percent ready to show the guests that were coming over in a few days.  About a few weeks prior which was right after the first snowfall I needed to get glasses for everyone that was coming over and I searched the internet and went to eBay and searched for the Nvidia 3D Discover glasses and was surprised not to see any.  I kept searching for anaglyph glasses and stumbled across some lots of them.  I found a seller from China who sold a hundred of them with free shipping for a little over twenty dollars I said this is too good to pass up.  I read the sellers feedback and reviews and saw that the seller was legit and purchased one set of a hundred anaglyph glasses.  I was so happy to be able to give anaglyph glasses with a disc of 3D ready photos to various friends and family.  I was too excited to wait for these glasses and kept a pair of my “Spy Kids 3D” glasses in my pocket with a flash drive of pictures so I could show people at my job.  When I showed a couple of fellow associates the pictures on the computer there were amazed and asked “How did you do this?”  A feeling of joy saturated my emotions and it felt great.  I saw that this could a good path to be involved with this type of technology.  I went over to a digital picture frame that had a USB input and tested the pictures on that and showed some other workers and they thought it was cool.  It seemed that the 3D got people more immersed into the pictures and caused a different kind of reaction then my 2D photos did.  I went out later that day and purchase an inexpensive small picture frame so I could also use that when guest come over during the holidays.  I thought maybe I could print these pictures so I put the flashed drive directly into my printer I had and all I saw was a black screen for a minute so I pulled it out.  I didn’t know what to do about printing so I wasn’t worried about that.  Now the anaglyph glasses were in transit from China and I had the Blu-Ray player set up and also a little picture frame to show a crowd when they came over.  I started to research about printing 3D pictures and saw that there was a place that I could upload my picture and the lenticular prints would be created and shipped for a somewhat of a hefty fee from Tokyo, Japan.  This processed seemed painful so I didn’t want anything to do with it.  I felt like maybe I could find a better solution but none were apparent.  I decided to drive to the local IMAX Theater and purchase a week and a half ahead of time the tickets for James Cameron’s “Avatar” because it was going to be sold out.  I purchased tickets for the first morning show of its released to go with three friends and secured that day off of work and I also purchased three more tickets to go see it three more times back to back on the Wednesday after the initial release.  I thought it was a crazy idea but I had a feeling inside me that it was worth it.  It was a few days before the release of “Avatar” and I had a dream that I met James Cameron and told him about myself.  I wish I could have showed him some 3D pictures because I know he would have appreciated it.  Almost every channel on the television was talking about the massive snow storm that was approaching and it was going to be intense.  The snow arrived and I was nervous about getting to the theater with my two friends so I called the theater just to make sure that they were going to be opened.  The morning came and my one friend with his compact car attempted to get to my house but kept getting stuck.  I called my other friend with an SUV and asked why his wasn’t coming with that instead of waiting for the compact car.  He was hesitant just because it was a new car and decided that he no choice but to get us or we would not make it to the movie.  The snow was dense and there was so much of it.  It was hard to get to my place so I had to walk towards the main road to get picked up.  We stopped at a convenient store to get some goodies and to park the compact car prior to getting in the SUV.  We arrived at the movie twelve minutes prior to starting and the parking lot was not even really plowed and everyone was having trouble so we parked and ran in the theater.  Thank goodness we pre-purchased the tickets because people were being told that the show was sold out.  The ticket was ripped and the 3D glasses were handed to us and we go the last of the perfect center seats that were available and were finally able to take a moment to relax because we made it to the IMAX Theater.  The movie was of pristine 3D quality and was a blast.  I took of my glasses for a minute during the film to see what the parallaxing looked like to get an idea of how the images worked.  I realized the parallaxing was so great that your eye muscles didn’t have work hard or too much compared to the few other 3D films that were out there.  The movie ended and it was time for lunch.  Driving through the snow was not fun but we good some food and I was back at my house to ponder what I saw.  It was kind of nice to have some 3D shooting experience because I felt like I understood the direction 3D was kind of going into.  Now the question was “how do I watch “Avatar” at home in 3D”.  I didn’t even want to think how long that was going to be.  I went out the next day and got some snow pictures in the morning and surprisingly got some decent results.

The Turkey Day Adventure!

I want to tell you about the morning of Thanksgiving Day of 2009 and how I just put the parade on the television and new it was time to get the turkey in the oven.  It was my actual first turkey that I was cooking because every other year somebody else cooked the meal for everyone.  I wasn’t cooking for a party so I didn’t need a lot of food so I just kept it simple for a few people.  I have cooked many chickens prior to this day and figured that the functionality of the turkey had to be very similar to that of a chicken.  I decided to cook the turkey just like I did with the chickens using my general recipe.  I used an oven bag to put the turkey in after adding the proper items to bring flavor to the bird.  I used olive oil with salt and pepper on the entirety of the turkey.  I placed rosemary, sage, thyme and some variously chopped onions on and in the turkey.  I used some dried stuffing mix inside and around the turkey to fill the remainder of the room that was available by the pan and cut a small hole in the top of the oven bag after tying it and it was time to put the turkey into the oven.  I believe I had the oven set somewhere around 350 Fahrenheit similar to when I cooked my chickens and I knew I had some to time to kill so it was perfect to go on an adventure to get some 3D pictures.  I came up with a plan to follow a path through the woods into an adjacent neighborhood to get some pictures and I knew I had to do a little trespassing in order to be successful.  I grabbed the W1 and knew it was time to put that wrist strap on and get a good grip on the camera and travel up the street to a hidden path way that a few people knew and that deer often travel.  I started taking photos on the pathway just to make sure everything was working before continuing on.  I make it near the end of the path and I could see that I was next to the back yards of a few houses.  I struggled through some terrain and made it through the yard into this slightly peculiar neighborhood.  It wasn’t the best built neighborhood and not every house was at it seemed to be.  I felt like I was some kind of journalist because I knew the history of the area and wished that more money was used to create better houses, sewers, or other things that I will not mention.  So I started clicking away and I noticed a garage door opened and a strange man in partial hunting gear exited his garage quite oddly.  I was getting paranoid and thought he was coming after me.  Then I got scared and got the hell out of there vowing never to return because it seemed like it could be dangerous.  I cut through another yard and terrain to get back on the path and secretly watched the man standing strangely between two houses like a zombie.  I almost wanted to take a picture of this event but thought it was unnecessary.  I started thinking all of these crazy things and realized I can’t be involved with this place regardless of the situation and headed back to home base.  It was an excellent field test for the camera and had now I experienced how to move fast and hold the camera properly when in stealth mode.  I got home and get myself a nice beverage to compliment the holiday and started to calm down and feel good.  I decided that the next thing to do is to transfer the pictures to anaglyph to see my results of The Turkey Day Adventure!

The first snow trial!

The first real snow had touched the ground and it actually felt like December.  I was proud to take 3D pictures of this because snow always got me excited.  I was like a young kid again with a new toy to play with.  I added up the pictures and saw that I took almost eight gigabytes of pictures so far but it was worth every memory amount just because a great 3D picture made the effort worth it.  I went around to some different spots in the woods to take some snow pictures.  It wasn’t really an exciting event and there wasn’t enough light or snow to justify the effort.  I was not happy because I could not get any really good snow pictures so I went back inside and decided to do some post-production work on the computer.  I started thinking that the holidays were approaching and that there will be some family members and friends coming to my home and I thought it would be a great time to show everyone the 3D pictures when they came over.  I didn’t have too many anaglyph glasses or really anyway to show everyone without using the computer.  I went out and purchased a relatively inexpensive Blu-Ray player to replace the HD-DVD player and I added a longer HDMI cable to compliment the player.  I could now put the anaglyph pictures on a disc and display them on the 720P television in my family room.  It was sad to say “goodbye” to my HD-DVD player but it knew the time would eventually come.  When I first saw a movie on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray it felt like the first time I saw a Laserdisc film when I was younger.  The HD-DVD versus the Blu-Ray war was actually a good thing for the consumer market even though it seemed like a bad thing and that it was an annoyance because when Toshiba made the executive decision to allow Sony to rule the High-Definition market a lot of people felt like they wasted their money on an already obsolete technology.  The HD-DVD was region free so you could order “Brother Hood of the Wolf” from France and watch it with little (correctly choosing English in the beginning) or no problems at all.  The Blu-Ray was not region free but you could find region free Blu-Rays on the internet and watch them with ease.  The main reason why this war of the 1080p movies was good because Toshiba poured an insane amount of money into solid state research and development.  This only meant that memory cards were going to get bigger and cheaper very quickly.  The ability to show JPEGS from a DVD-R on a Blu-Ray device was great because it showed the picture at optimal quality.  I was getting closer to my goal of showing other people these pictures almost like it was going my first art exhibition.  Unfortunately I still didn’t have any really impressive pictures to boast about but that day was sure to come.

The W1 in action!

I was living the dream of taking 3D photos out in the field.  The processing didn’t seem to be too fast but patience was a virtue with the W1 camera.  Holding the camera was awkward because you had to realize that it was easy to get your fingers over the right lens because it was immediately below the main button of the camera.  I had to slide the front down to get ready to shoot then slide it back up and it fit into my pockets when I was moving to another location. If my pockets were smaller like some other pants that I owned it could have been a problem fitting the camera into my pants.  I didn’t always place it into my pockets because I found it more convenient to hold it tightly with the wrist strap when I was in motion.  Getting a good 3D picture wasn’t easy because if things were moving and I didn’t have the flash on the images were usually blurred.  If I used the flash regardless of the situation it helped with the blur.  The camera was not ideal in low light situations because the focus might not be accurate and you can notice on the computer the limitations of the quality that was produced by the camera.  It seemed that three out of ten photos came out good but the more light the better the image was.  Sunny days looked beautiful and late nights were not so good.  A great 3D photo was worth all of the trouble that that camera seemed to have.  I kind of got this feeling from the reviews that I found on the internet but I wanted 3D so bad I could taste it.  I decided to test out the video with this camera and it wasn’t bad.  There was some ghosting but it was 3D standard definition video.  I thought it would be so cool to make a short film with the 3D but I had no idea how to edit the actual 3D video.  Taking the video was a hit or miss with the W1.  If an image was too close it looked like it was split up or out of focus but if it was just right like within around three feet in front of you it looked great.  Viewing the video was neat to see on the camera but not as good as the photos.  You had to be cautious because the way buttons were set up you had to hit the view button then select the video and press down to view it but you don’t want to hit the down button again because it will erase the video when it was playing.  This was a feature that I hated and I was glad that I read about it within the PDF file before using the camera.  I went to my computer and transferred the files to it because I wanted to watch the video with “StereoMovie Maker” to see what it looked like.  The anaglyph video quality was not that great compared to the pictures but was kind of cool.  I noticed that audio quality of the video was excellent compared to my other digital cameras.  The 3D video files were 3D-AVI files which were another format that I never saw prior to using this camera.  I converted the video to anaglyph and it quadrupled the file’s size and was split up if it reached a little more than two gigabytes of file space.  This was annoying to realize another memory managing conundrum.  I could edit the anaglyph video files with decent video editing software but did I really want to shoot a video for anaglyph when ten minutes was going to be more than eight gigabytes to preserve the original quality!  This wasn’t really bad compared to other uncompressed or 1080P video files out there in the world but still needed to be downsized and compressed for DVD unless it was designated for a Blu-Ray burn.  After vigorously viewing these pictures and video I realized that sometimes taking photos or footage of objects or subjects that were red or blue caused problems when seeing them when converted to anaglyph.  This was just another thing to think about when shooting with a 3D camera.

Continuation from the first set of photos!

Grab your anaglyph glasses and take a look at these color anaglyph photos that are a continuation from the first set of 3D photos!