Can you turn flat pictures into a 3D one?
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Choose a pair of photographs – You’ll need a ‘left’ and ‘right’ of the same colour.
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Slide them into the viewer
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Look through the lenses
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Do the photos look 3D? – you might have to move them to find the right spot.
This is a stereoscope. It helps us see flat images as three-dimensional. The two images are slightly offset views of the same scene. The lenses on the viewer ensure that one image is seen by your left eye and one by your right. Your brain then combines them to create a single, 3D view.
The 3D effect works because our eyes are a few centimetres apart, so each eye sees a slightly different view of the world. Our brains analyse the differences between these two views to get a sense of depth. You can fool your brain by taking two pictures that are offset by the same distance as the gap between your pupils (about 63 mm).
Archaeologists used stereoscopes like this one to view wreck sites in 3D before modern 3D photogrammetry. It helped them view things from different angles and get a better understanding of space and context than they could from flat images.