Does anyone remember Bwana Devil, one of the first 3D films to use polarisation technology in the 1950s? Or Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, employing the anaglyph system in a final stab at lifting cinema beyond the flat screen? Following Avatar, 3D imagery is once again being hailed as the Next Big Thing, but haven’t we been here before? And in its wake, has 3D photography finally come of age?

Three-dimensional photography is far from new. Sir Charles Wheatstone’s early contributions to the development of stereoscopy predate the invention of Daguerreotypes by a year, and by the 1860s, stereoscopic photographs and the devices to view them had become popular in Victorian parlours.

The trick was to display two images of the same subject, each depicting a slightly different perspective, which had to be equal to the perspectives both eyes normally perceive. Hold one finger in front of you and look at it with your left eye closed, then look again with the right eye closed, and you see the difference.

With the release of James Cameron’s Avatar last year, 3D has become a buzzword once again, and last month, days before the launch of the FIFA World Cup, Sony brought the UK press together to unveil its new line of 3D televisions. Both Samsung and Panasonic have already brought out similar 3D-enabled flat-screen TVs, but Sony has a wider range of products and, crucially, Sony Studios is actively producing new 3D movies to be released later this year and next. In fact, the company estimates that more than 100 3D movies are currently in production. Sony Music, meanwhile, is inviting its artists to produce 3D video clips, with Shakira taking the lead with her World Cup song Waka Waka.

The mechanics of 3D imagery haven’t really changed, and today’s 3D televisions use the same stereoscopic technology invented more than 100 years ago. A conventional TV set will show between 24 and 30 frames per second, while a 3D-enabled television will relay 48 to 60 frames per second – 30 for the left eye and another 30 for the right one. A pair of battery-powered stereoscopic glasses will, then, in synch with the user’s television, hide each eye for up to 30 times a second to create a 3D illusion.

With the number of 3D movies coming up, and some camera and film manufacturers’ close ties with movie studios, it wasn’t going to be long before someone started talking about 3D photography. Fujifilm was the first. Last July it announced its first 3D camera, capable of shooting three-dimensional photos and movies.
 
The FinePix Real 3D W1 features a newly developed “Real 3D Lens System”, unveiled at the Photokina trade show in 2008, and uses two Fujinon lenses to capture two pictures almost simultaneously, then combine them to create a 3D image. An in-camera processor synchronises the data from the two lenses and two CCD sensors, and determines shooting conditions such as focus, brightness and tonality to blend this information into a single, symmetrical image for both stills and movies.

But Fujifilm’s first foray into 3D photography didn’t create the buzz expected, largely because users had to buy a 3D-enabled screen or order 3D prints from Japan to enjoy their images. Sony’s imaging division has taken a different approach. In May it announced the NEX 3 and NEX 5 micro cameras, both of which can apparently shoot 3D images.

Christian Brown, a senior product manager for Sony’s consumer electronics division, explains to BJP how 3D imagery is created. “The 3D technology relies on our sweep-panorama technology,” he says, referring to a feature first introduced to its Cybershot point-and-shoot cameras last year, which automatically stitches together several photos taken as the users pan the camera horizontally or vertically across a scene.

Brown says Sony chose to use that technology to enable 3D photography because “the camera records a series of images that are close to one another”. This allows the camera’s processing engine to take two images that were shot within milliseconds of each other – pulling one image for the left eye, the other for the right eye – and combine them to create a 3D image. “Otherwise, you would need a camera with two sensors and two lenses,” he says.

It will become available this month, after a firmware update that will include Nvidia’s 3D image processing software, and the introduction of the 3D Vision Photo Viewer. Brown says he hopes to see the 3D capabilities of the NEX cameras trickle down to other product lines, although that’s unlikely to include its professional digital SLRs.

Nintendo is also making a foray into 3D photography. In 2011, the Japanese gaming firm will release its Nintendo 3DS console, which sports two outward facing stereoscopic lenses with a resolution of 0.3 megapixel. Both cameras are capable of taking images of up to 640×480 pixels, and, when combined, will create 3D images viewable on the console’s 3.53-inch top screen – the Nintendo 3DS also has a 3.02-inch bottom touch screen.

But the console’s greatest strength resides in the fact that players won’t need glasses to view 3D images. The screen uses parallax technology, which, when the player is positioned in front of the console, broadcasts one image to the left eye and another to the right one. Nintendo says the console will also support 3D movies released by Disney, Dreamworks and Warner Brothers, and will play a wide range of 3D games.
Current 3D technologies are limited to the amateur market, with no plans from any of the camera manufacturers to develop it for the professional market. That’s largely down to the fact that 3D photos are only be viewable on 3D-enabled screens and, until 3D television becomes more widespread, 3D photography is unlikely to take off.

It’s the classic chicken-and-egg struggle, says Michael Cai, vice president of research at Interpret, a market analysis firm. But Sony, along with its competitors, is confident that the technology will gather momentum. Sony expects 40% of British TV sets to be 3D friendly by 2014. However, scientists at the Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute believe that by 2015 3D LCD televisions will be available without the need for expensive viewing glasses, rendering today’s crop of 3D televisions obsolete.

Only then, say analysts such as Cai, will 3D go mainstream. In the meantime, photographers who want to join the latest 3D bandwagon will have to make do with the same basic stereoscopic techniques as Wheatstone, albeit with the aid of modern-day software.