It's a common misconception that you need special equipment to take a 3D photo. You don't All you need is a bit of knowledge and any old camera (even the one on your phone is OK!).

The easiest way to take a stereo photo is the cha-cha method (that's right, we'll do a bit of dancing!). Basically, you take a photo, take a step to the side, and take another photo:



Camera stock by muratyil

Just make sure you don't move too far (whoa there Fella!), because the distance between the two photos should be about the distance between your eyes (in fancy stereo speak we call this the "interocular". You can make this distance a bit bigger for objects that are really far away, (like landscapes and scenery), and a bit smaller for things which are close up.

Be careful not to make the difference between your images too big, or you end up with a stereo pair that doesn't sit on top of each other properly. When this happens, you can see transparent outlines of both images, not to mention it hurts your eyes! This is called ghosting.



There's two types of stereo pairs (a pair of 2 images that make one stereo picture) that you can make. You can either keep the camera pointing straight ahead as you cha-cha which is used for "parallel" stereograms, or you can look at a point, and then tilt the camera slightly so it's still looking at that point when you cha-cha, which is used for "cross-eyed" stereograms.

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