Stereo Portrait Project, by Alex Fry and Jamie Nimmo, is a 3D photography exhibition documenting Australian creatives. Their version 1.0 rig used two Nikon D90 DSLR cameras attached to a custom camera rig, separated by a distance that is intended to emulate human eyes.

They tell Nikon Rumors,

To synchronize the cameras we used an RF trigger split out to two preload shutter release cables. We tested how fast we could sync both shutters together with the flashes, and got reliable sync up to 1/160 speed. Giving us the ability to have people move around, talk to us and not inhibit their performance. This was very important since hands in front of the body look fantastic in 3d.

The photographs were sorted in Aperture, exported to Nuke (compositing software) and tweaked, and finally combined into 3D photos. Here’s an example:

Sadly, you’ll need 3D glasses to appreciate these photographs. I just ordered a pair for about $1.50 on eBay, since it’ll probably be useful to have a pair lying around as 3D continues to explode.

The show is running at the Oh Really Gallery in Sydney, Australia from May 27 to June 10, 2010.

Stereo Portrait Project (via Nikon Rumors)

The BeetleCam is a remote controlled car that has a Canon 400D DSLR and two flash units strapped to the top. It’s the brainchild of brothers Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas, award-winning wildlife photographers based in the UK, and allows them to capture some unique photographs of some of Africa’s most dangerous animals.

William tells us,

We are brothers from the UK specialising in wildlife photography. We aim to use teamwork and ingenuity to take unusual shots of wild animals. Recently we embarked on a project to photograph African wildlife from a ground level perspective using a camera mounted on top of a four-wheel drive remote control buggy called BeetleCam. We took BeetleCam to Tanzania and photographed lions, elephants and buffalo with it. The project proved to be a great success and we managed to get some amazing photographs from a unique perspective.

For more photographs from the BeetleCam, and some videos of the cam in action, check out the BeetleCam project page.

Image credits: Photographs by Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas and used with permission

Belgian photographer fotoopa (“photo grandpa” in Dutch) shoots ultra-high speed photographs with laser rigs he builds himself. He tells us:

I’m retired, and work inside in the winter making high-speed pictures of water figures. In the springtime and summer I’m outside to capturing insects in-flight. I have a mechanics (15 years experience) and electronics (26 years) background, but photography was always my hobby.

All of my equipment is do-it-yourself. Macro photography has always been one of my favorite types of photography.

Descriptions and diagrams of his rigs are posted for 2008 and 2009. Here’s a glimpse at one of his setups:

To capture insets in flight, his rig detects the insects using two crossed laser beams. This causes a “superfast electro magnet” to trigger the shutter, which opens and closes in less than 5 milliseconds. Shooting at f/22 and ISO 100, he uses 2 or 3 external flashes at minimum power to obtain sufficient light at so short a shutter speed. He adds,

For insects in-flight, a special second shutter system provides the short shutter-lag of ~7 msec necessary. There is also a high-tech IR laser system with an extra third macro-lens and internal AVR controller. In 40 microseconds, this system sees (via the reflected IR light into the detector lens) if an object comes in focus, and give the information to the central CPLD hardware controller that drive the whole system. In this manner even very fast moving insects are in perfect focus in the picture frame.

In the winter, the water figures are done indoors. First done in 2004, I covered a speaker with a membrane, and put a digital wave through it to move the fine colored droplets on the membrane. This provides wonderful images and an unlimited number of possibilities.

For 2010 I built a 3D stereo setup to capture all the high-speed macro pictures in 3D. The setup uses 2 DSLR Nikon cameras, the D200 and D300

To see more of these amazing photographs, you can check out fotoopa on Flickr or on pbase.

(via MAKE)

Image credit: Photographs by fotoopa and used with permission.