Ideas for Teaching

Stereo Photography

How to take stereo photos:

I highly recommend using slide film rather than print. Crossing your eyes to look at prints is much harder than looking through two slide viewers! Also, notice that I cropped the images on the previous pages to make them narrow. That makes it easier to view, but crops quite a bit of the original photograph. Therefore, if you must use print film, try to find narrow, vertical scenes so you can crop the photos down to the subject of interest.

Math alert! My experience shows that you're aiming for about 8 degrees of separation between the two pictures. Since this wasn't practical while hiking, I guessed and moved about 20 feet along the baseline for the two examples on the previous pages. It might be helpful to make a table of distances and baselines before venturing out to find objects to photograph.

Use an isosceles triangle with apex angle of 8 degrees to calculate baseline and distance.

Distance to Object	Baseline Length

Stereo from an airplane window:

Stereo is easiest to do from an airplane window. Take one picture, wait a few seconds, and take another. Stereo works best when clouds provide depth both toward-away from you and vertically. Too bad this isn't an option for most schools. :-)

Stereo from the ground:

Ground objects can be taken in stereo! Be careful to avoid a scene with anything in the foreground that would not be in both images. Foreground objects are most easily eliminated when you can take the pictures from a balcony, hilltop, or any place where the ground slopes away from you. Simply aiming the camera upward might also work because that, too, would eliminate foreground objects.

One last tip:

The scene will change as you move across the baseline! Be sure to note one or two reference points in your first shot so the second will have the same scene.

Last updated: March 25, 2002
Created by: DSZ