STEREO IMAGE COMPOSITION
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General Guidelines
The most fundamental aspects of stereo photography are shared by all branches of photography. General composition, lighting, and exposure guidelines can be picked up by reading basic material at any good camera shop. Kodak also has a lot of basic photography material available on the Internet. To make the best use of this page, I intend to concentrate on very basic issues that pertain to stereo photographs.
Keep It Simple
One of the biggest fallacies about "3D" pictures is that they should all have something that protrudes from the image to poke out your eye! Much of this probably stems from the heyday of Hollywood 3D films, where no director would overlook the opportunity to thrill the audience with something poked or thrown into the front row! The essence of stereo photography is realism. Save the fancy effects until you are experienced enough to do it right. Chances are, once you know what you are doing, you'll be a lot less enamoured by such "tricks".
Have a Reference in the Foreground
Unless the picture was taken with a hyperstereo lens separation, a picture of a scenic vista looks pretty flat. There is very little parallax difference in distant objects, so the brain just reconstructs the scene as "out there". Such scenic shots can be done, but the secret is to have something in the foreground to provide a relative "depth reference". The object can be a tree, rock formation, people, or whatever else might fit the theme of the shot. As a general guideline, avoid setting up the shot in a way that your foreground element(s) are located in the center of the image. That is distracting and leads to a subconscious desire to want to look around the object(s) to see what is behind them. Such elements should be positioned to either side (or top or bottom) to help "frame" the scene. This is an elementary aspect of composition that is even more important in stereo photography.
Watch Your Distance
Your foreground reference needs to be relatively close to the camera to be effective, but how close is close? A general guideline is to avoid having anything closer then about 30X the distance between the lenses of the stereo camera (or the offset distance in the case of a slide-bar set-up). Since the lens separation of the average camera is about 2.5 inches (~6.4 cm), your foreground elements should be no closer than about ~ 6 feet (75 inches) or ~ 2 meters (192 cm). This will avoid unecessary eye-strain in reconstructing the image and will also assure that your "foreground" object(s) are in sharp focus.
Watch the Stereo Window
Any stereo image is surrounded by the equivalent of a frame or "window" that starts at the edge of the image and extends outward. There are a few general principles about this window or frame that you need to consider as you format/edit your pictures: