Camera makers are jumping into the 3-D photo market more than 20 years after the format was laughed out of town and ended up as Michael Jackson's sidekick in Captain Eo.
Recently, Fujifilm announced a two-lensed camera that takes images and movies in 3-D and captures wide-angle photos of single scenes simultaneously. As a result, we've heard some rumbling in the wires about other camera manufacturers coming out with their own version in the next year or so.
Since the lenses are 6-7 cm from each other (or about the same length between most people’s eyes), the Real 3-D's camera processes the images in real time to produce the stereoscopic 'trick' effect that makes them look as if they're floating in air. This is where the processing update of Fujitsu's 'Real Photo Processor 3-D' chip comes in.
The chip blends the dual images and all the important metrics (focus, zoom range and exposure) at once and pushes them out to the LCD, which is also on a 3-D display. By the time this camera is released next year, the company is promising to be able to shoot HD video on it as well.
Of course, there are several 3-D custom rigs out there that are producing 3-D images, but they're usually very expensive. Some have even made 3-D rigs out of two mainstream digital cameras. In the case of the 3-D Advantage, Casio, a company has attached a tri-delta beam splitter to a single point-and-shoot camera that creates a 3-D image with a single shutter. But a pro-ready camera ready to shoot 3-D images is better than a custom rig, for obvious user-friendly reasons.
So while the majority of the renewed excitement about 3-D imaging has come from the display side and recent focus from the movie industry, don't expect Fujifilm to be the only one coming out with a consumer 3-D cam.
A few years ago, Olympus created a 3-D camera system for the da Vinci Surgical robot system that works in real time and is dependable enough to used during open surgery. They only have figure out how to transfer the tech to a more affordable, consumer friendly chassis and they'll be in the 3-D game. Don't be surprised if they've already figured out how to do that.
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