Thanks, Patrick. One of the false-color shots on the Phoenix Website is actually a colorized frame from one side of the stereo camera; seems it would be relatively straightforward to colorize the corresponding frame from the other side. I implore everyone without a real stereo viewer to try the crossed-eyes method to view REAL stereo images. They are so much better than the red-blue anaglyphs. It's much easier than viewing random-dot stereograms- you don't have to look "past" the photos to some imaginary distant focal point. You simply cross your eyes and overlap the two photos. Try to not overcomplicate the process in frustration. Place the photos side-by-side. Sometimes you have to trim them with a scissor or lay one over the edge of the other, to reduce the separation distance a bit. Viewing distance is not critical, but the further back you get, the less drastically you have to cross your eyes. As you *slowly* cross your eyes, you will notice that three "images" form. The condition you are after is a visual overlap of both left-and-right photos- this is the photo in the middle of the three you are perceiving. Often one of the photos will have to be rotated slightly to achieve proper registration. Don't give up, it's like riding a bike. Frustrating at first, but once achieved you realize how easy it is, and how fantastic the pay-off. It may take five or ten minutes, but it's worth it. Once you get the knack, you'll never look at another red-blue "acid trip" photo again. B&W aside, realistic colors are worth the effort. And once you know how to do it, you can do it on a monitor and forego printing the shots completely, if you have a decent image manipulation program. Remember that for the Mars lander, the stereo effect will be best for objects from a meter to several meters away- worst for things in the extreme foreground, and gradually lessening with distance. On the footpad photo, for example, the details near the top of the leg are seen from drastically different perspectives by the left-and-right stereo cameras and it is actually impossible to register these details for a stereo view. It starts to "click" on the leg coil spring, improving as your gaze wanders down the leg toward the footpad. The little bracket with the hole in it on top of the footpad is a 3-dimensional wonder. Look at the two dark recesses under it; the grit that settled onto the footpad, the texture of the permafrost surface. Incredible. Once you can "free-fuse" stereo images easily, you can take your own true stereo photos, in color. I have stereo pairs of comet Hale-Bopp, using the earth's motion through space between exposures to generate the left-right separation. Sliding mechanisms for terrestrial stereo shots are only a registration convenience and not strictly needed. Rotating one of the photos if needed is a minor adjustment in the absence of a slider. For panoramic terrestrial shots, all one need do is move the camera/tripod a few inches to a few feet to the side of the first shot. Increasing the distance between the pairs increases the "scale model effect" with panoramic scenic shots. There are also thousands of historical stereo images available. The US Army started taking battlefield stereo pairs in the Civil War; there are even some of President Lincoln. I have seen many stereo shots of WWI battlefields as well. On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 3:13 AM, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
Last night's 22:00 briefing had a lot about images. Sounds like the "good stuff" will be released Tuesday at the regular 14:00 MDT briefing. But there was no mention of stereo imagery.
So I emailed your question to a contact at Phoenix. I'll let you know if I hear something.