I have been utterly geeked this week, as I finally invested in a side-by-side rig. It's all very cheap, a couple of $200 unsunc HD camcorders on a $20 slide bar, but it was supposed to be an experiment, after all.

An exciting experiment, too! I'm more geeked than when I got my first twin-lens camera, the TD10, a year ago. Now, I'm finally able to play with some real depth. Before, I thought it was a good idea to start with something simple like the TD10, but now I'm not so sure.

I had been waiting until I would have some way of monitoring the stereo, in the field. And I did just create a working heads-up display from 2 car back-up monitors and a Hasbro My3D viewer. I haven't yet figured out how to package up the guts of the monitors yet, though, and am still susceptible to electric shocks! So the footage I've shot with the SbS rig, thus far, has just been by-eye alignment and guess work. But it's worked out a lot better than I thought.

The following footage was shot at West Hollywood's annual Halloween street party, with thousands of costumed people in the street. I just stuck the slide bar on a light stand, and raised it above the crowd, to get a cleaner view. Since I like experimenting with the extremes, I separated the cameras by the greatest amount possible on this bar: 10" IA. It's a nice switch, going from 21cm to 10"!

3D Massive Halloween Street Party in L.A.! - YouTube

Nice work Matt! And what a fun scene to shoot in 3D!

Thanks, Jesse!

Here's a montage from Halloween night, crazy crowds and costumes, all hyperstereo IA = 10", to some tasty dubstep:

Hyperstereo 3D Massive L.A. Halloween Street Party - YouTube

I do so love my new SbS rig, but already, I'm hungry for an IA greater than 10".

Sure, 10" comes with limitations. I can't have anything closer than 10' to camera, and really shouldn't have anything closer than 20', especially if the far depth is much greater (these are just estimates, based upon my limited experience).

But I'm hungry to shoot architecture, which is one of the 3D subjects my eye is always caught by, but which low IA seems to do nothing for. Also, I'm eager to get up into the Hollywood Hills, and shoot L.A. with a very wide IA, possibly several feet apart. My cameras each have 40X zooms, and I can't wait to try very long lenses with very wide IAs.

The following images were both shot with an IA of 10" (all my current tests are playing with the extreme, and seeing what I can get away with). Both real-world views look delicious to my eye, but only the ground-level camera shot seems to have the deep depth that I'm looking for. The view from the bridge is nice, but it needs a bit wider IA to really make the red cones, etc. really jump out (it's a bit hard to tell from the thumbnails).

So I'm curious to see what y'all use. I've only been able to google one stereoscopic bar with 20+" of separation, and it's almost $900! Presumably there are some good DIY methods out there, using some kind of sliding door frame or something. I'd really like to try out IAs of 6 feet, or so.

Thanks!