But now, in the 21st century, we have digital photography which requires no developing costs and therefore no cost limitation to the amounts of experimental picture taking one can do.  Two inexpensive digital "web cams", exactly alike in manufacturer and model, mounted on a plastic ruler and married to a tripod have afforded me no end of fun with 3D picture taking on the cheap. 

So, here you see me setting up my cameras.  They are a couple of Concord Eye-Q Minis which me cost about $40 each when I bought them at a Walgreen's Drug Store.  Note that the lenses tend to aim higher than what one might think from looking through the viewfinder.  The reason, I believe, is probably because they were designed to take pictures from atop one's computer monitor.  But, I've gradually been learning to adapt to that.

The trick, when using two cameras like this, is to hit both shutter buttons at exactly the same instant.  You'll see that in one or two of my shots I wasn't as successful at this as I might have liked. 

Along with a trick in taking 3D photos, there's a trick or two in viewing them. In this next section below, I'll discuss those. 

However, If you've already "free viewed" a zillion other 3D Stereo Photography web sites, and already know this stuff, just use these links for the "crossed" or "parallel" image sets.

In freeviewing, you are using only your eyes.  There are, in turn, a couple of ways of doing this and I have provided image sets for each method.  You will find further detail on these two methods in the graphic below.

Another thing to keep in mind with the freeview methods, is that you might need to either bring your head closer to the computer screen or back off from it.  If you are using 640 x 480 screen resolution, you will need to definitely back off to about 4 or 5 feet away from the monitor because the pictures will be so big.

These pictures are optimized at a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, but keep in mind that you can still back away if you are having problems getting the two pictures to "snap" together into a third "center" pitcture which has the 3D depth to it.

The other adjustment you can use is to try tilting your head slightly to one side or the other.

The test graphic below will help you practice some freeviewing and also help you determine whether to use the "crossed" or "parallel" image sets.

Okay, now you should have an idea about which of the following sets of pictures to choose.  If you aren't going for the 3D depth perception, it doesn't matter.  Aside from placement of the right-eye and left-eye pictures, the sets are identical.