The Illusion Of Depth | What Is That?!
The year is 1958, Hollywood star Cary Grant is wrapping up his latest film North by Northwest, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
On October 20th, on-set photographer Kenny Bell captures a publicity photograph of Grant for MGM. Grant stands in front of massive Mole Richardson fresnels, holding what appears to be a peculiar looking camera with three lenses. What is that?! Why does it need three lenses? How common was this camera? Today, we’re going to find out what that camera was and how this technology from the 1900s has made it’s way into our modern smartphones.
“Cary Grant During Production Of North By Northwest”, by Kenny Bell, Alfred Hitchcock papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The camera in Grant’s hands is called a Stereo Realist and was manufactured by the David White Company from 1947 to 1971. Though this was not the first stereo camera available on the market, the camera launched a popular era of stereo photography during the early 1950s. The word stereo is more commonly understood today as audio with two channels, one for each ear. However, in this case it is short for stereoscope. A lens for each eye capturing a “Left” and “Right” image, the center lens is only used as a viewfinder. The idea being that these two images, taken a few inches apart from each other to simulate the position of human eyes, could be brought together through the power of the brain to create the illusion of depth, or a “3D” image.
Kim Scarborough, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
When we think about old 3D movies, we tend to think of red and cyan paper glasses, and that’s a very similar concept called Anaglyph 3D. The red filters out blue and green colors, while the cyan filters out red. The result is our brains receiving two slightly different images to create the illusion of depth. However, Hollywood tends to repeat itself, ever more evident with a crowded scene of reboots, and in 2007 James Cameron reintroduced the idea of stereoscopic films to the masses again. During the production of Avatar, Cameron and Vince Pace developed a “Fusion Camera System” that utilized two cameras, one facing forward, and a second camera located on top pointed down into a mirror slightly offset. As you could imagine with two cinema cameras, the system is heavy and cumbersome to operate. The system found a sharp decline in use for productions following 2013. Instead, many films opted to be converted into 3D through a post-production process. As of this writing, the only film to recently use the system was Alita: Battle Angel released in 2019.
Vince Pace’s HD FUSION 3D system, the rig consists of Sony F950 HD cameras. HDVideoPro.com
Stereoscopic photography, on the other hand, grew in popularity once again with the rise of social media and the animated GIF format through a strobe effect cycling through the two images that can create the same illusion of depth. The popular photo-sharing platform Instagram has a feature called “Boomerang” that can emulate the same idea utilizing more images to cycle through. In addition, it’s difficult to find a smart phone today that does not have dual lenses. The “portrait” mode on smart phone utilizes this same concept of dual lenses to create the effect of a blurry background you would naturally get with a regular camera lens.
You too can create your own stereoscopic photographs using any camera. Aim the camera at your subject. Take a picture. Hold it! Lean 2-inches to your left or right. Take your second picture. While this may not be as fast and convenient as a Stereo Realist camera, the effects are virtually the same. With the help of my photographer friend Kaitlyn Lavo, I was able to create a stereoscopic portrait to share.
Photos would be placed in a similar mount.
The photo mount would be placed in a viewer that looked like a pair of goggles. A similar effect can be achieved using animated GIFs.
What Is That?!
Thanks for joining me for the very first post in a series I’m working on called What Is That?! where I explore weird media formats, obscure tech, and film mysteries! I hope you enjoyed this brief dive into the world of stereoscopic photography! If you have any film mysteries or something in the world of film that makes you say What Is That?! then feel free to drop me a line using that “Ask Us!” button. Who knows, the next post could be your idea!
