Nowadays is very easy to step into the three-dimensional photography world if one owns a digital photo camera of any type. In this paragraph we suggest the most practical method to create a stereo pair (left-right). We will deal with little more advanced techniques in the section    Shooting techniques.

To shoot still scenes, that is environments in which every element stay still for the time needed to do the shots, is possible to obtain the stereo pair simply shooting two photos at a little distance (in time and space).

This technique is known as cha-cha because can be simply adopted unbalancing the weight of the body from one foot to the other between the two shots.

It is, however, critical to respect some fondamental rules :

• the camera must be perfectly allined horizontally (or vertically, in case you are doing portraits formats);
• focus and then disable the autofocus before making the two shots;
• make the second shot after having shifted the weight on the right foot maintaining the camera in the same line: camera must shift horizontally between the two shots but the axes of the lenses must remain perfectly parallel beween the two shots ;
• start with a minimal shift : one-two centimeters ; shift is a foundamental parameter that has to be mastered through experience

It is not difficult, but for sure you are going to repeat the test many times before getting your first good stereo pair.

Now you are ready to view you first 3D image. There are several ways (crossed-eye, parallel viewing, ..) to view it that are described in another section (   Viewing techniques ); if you already own the coloured 3D glasses we suggest you to create an anaglyph. You could use also graphical tools but if you are in a hurry and anxious to see the result of your effort we suggest you a fantastic freeware software:    AnaBuilder.

3D image obtained with the "cha-cha" method and AnaBuilder

Open the left and right image and overlap them so that, if you have followed the rules above, there are no vertically but just horizontally disalignments.

You got your first 3D image. Congratulations !!!

With a little more time and patience you will discover also all the othe fantastic options in AnaBuilder; however, all ANAG 3D Studio stereo images are prepared with Adobe Photoshop CS2 that can be made as much automatic as you need and offers more flexibility.