Make a 3-D Stereoscope Slide and Video Shooter

Step 6 Mounting a Camera

You will have to build the rear camera mount to match your camera, both in terms of length and height -- the vertical distance from the base of the camera to the center of the lens should be designed so the lens will line-up with the center of the small (and large) mirrors. In this case, I used a 1 1/2" wide piece of 1/2" thick material that is glued to the bottom of the base plate and extends 5 1/2" beyond the rear edge of the base. I put a slotted hole in mine so I could fool around with the camera to mirror distance. For the EOS 7D, a 1" elevation block brought the center of the lens up to the center of the mirrors. This does not have to be anything fancy, but it is very important that the camera end up level from left to right -- the eyes have an amazing ability to converge on the horizontal plane, but they don't do very well when there is a vertical miss-match between the left and right.

Ideally, you will want to be able to slightly swing the large mirrors on their single mounting screws to make the two images converge correctly for the distance to the selected elements of your photo. This is what your eyes do naturally at all times so that your left and right images converge properly, and of course, proper convergence is a key element of professional 3-D shooting.