Animated stereoviews of old Japan
In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan.
A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here, which were created from Flickr images posted by Okinawa Soba. Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information.
[Geisha washing their hands in the garden]
[Torii gates at Inari shrine, Kyoto]
[Geisha girls with flowers and cat]
[Traveler in the mountain fog near Chujenji]
[Tokyo Industrial Exposition, Ueno Park, 1907]
[Campfire on the peak of Mt. Myogi, Nakasendo]
[Geisha drinking beer in the park]
Very cool indeed. Thanks for posting this!
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bs’d
very interesting. thanks
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they look beautiful! retro meets 3D…very intriguing
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Lovely…shakey but they work well. Would never have thought of animating stereo pics :)
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These are really amazing. Now I wish I had a stereoscope so I could view these properly… oh wait, I do! View Master! Now I just need to get these on a VM reel.
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thank you, amazing post
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re: edward – just put them at large size on your computer monitor, stick a piece of cardboard down the middle and put your nose to the cardboard. You’ll have to work out the proper distance from the screen but you should be able to trick your eyes into the stereo effect that way (it’s just a different version of the View Master technique, really)
To take pictures like this, you need two identical cameras and a viewing separation of about 10°, both pointing at the right focal distance. Tricky, but possible with a nice mounting system (best if you had a way to periscope the camera viewfinders into each eye to help matching the focal distance.
Or just get one camera and get tricky with it.
I like how the animate gif makes those sumo wrestlers look like they’re actively flexing.
I also note that those sumo are far different from what we expect of the sumo of today.
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These pictures are amazing.
I’ve always been found of animated stereoviews (and also looping gif like 3 Frames : http://threeframes.net/ ) but this collection is wonderful : subject, colourization, technique, everything is perfect.
Thank you for posting this.
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These are so awesome! Thanks a lot!
Notice how the colorer made a few mistakes on some of the kimonos.
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Just a thought: not all japanese girls were “geisha”…
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Cool! I actually bought some of his lantern slides at a yard sale, They had a “Meeting at the gate” and I was going to buy it, but the owner changed their mind and decided not to sell it……… :(
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Pretty interesting stuff. It’s unbelievable how quick a country could change in a hundred years.
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AMAZING POST!!! I enjoy looking at these ^^ they are beautiful.
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It’s entirely possible to merge a stereo pair with no equipment at all, just the eyes alone. It isn’t at all easy to learn to do it, but once learned, can be fairly easy to do. It requires only two steps.
First, one must cross the eyes so that the individual pictures converge into one. On either side of the converged pair, there will be the pictures that will be less saturated; these are the opposite images each seen by only one eye. It is similar to the trick some of us learned in childhood of putting the index fingers together pointing toward each other, and then crossing the eyes to produce a third – a double-ended “finger” in between them. This part is pretty easy.
Second, with the eyes in that crossed position, they will focus at the point where their axes cross, which is intermediate to the distance to the pictures. While the pictures are converged, they will be out of focus. It is necessary to learn to focus the eyes at the actual distance to the picture instead of where they naturally focus. This is not easy for most people. Some people can learn this; many cannot. I won’t say that most cannot, because I suspect that many could do it if they thought in important enough to try to learn it. I have known very few people who can do this.
I learned this in kindergarten at nap time by looking at an acoustical tile ceiling with regularly spaced holes. I discovered that by superimposing adjacent rows of holes, I could make the ceiling appear to come down toward me. By converging rows spaced farther apart, I could get it to come even closer.
Since I can do it, I’d much prefer a straightforward presentation of the entire pair to the animation.
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Then click the link…
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LOL! I would have thought such a talented individual would have been able to read the paragraph at the beginning of the page stating “Follow the links under each animation for the original stereoviews and background information”
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I can do this too, I doubt it’s that rare considering how popular Magic Eye prints were in the 90s. The linked pictures are too small to fully appreciate though but I’ve had so much trippy fun looking at 3D images around the net.
Just keep crossing your eyes and trying to focus..
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Nevermind, managed found the all sizes link, they’re awesome!
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I love the effect. I am wondering if they become more convincing if they switch back and forth more quickly?
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This is so awesome. It is so cool to see the historical pics. I forget how recent they became industrialized.
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Where are the pics of them running up trees and flying between rooftops? oh wait…
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these are all new pictures photoshopped by the devil in order to hurt your eyes. be aware people, wake up!
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wow. Do your handlers know who have access to the internet?
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pfft that’s funny!
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СУПЕР!!!
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yabasugiru
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN??
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Heel erg bedankt voor deze prachige foto’s en het technische hoogstandje! Tenminste voor mij; ik heb zoiets nog nooit gezien op internet. Echt fantastisch.
(Thank you for the beautiful photographs and the technical peak.
At least for me: I never saw something like this on internet. Really great.)
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I’m sorry to correct you but the term “Geisha” is used too much in this. A Geisha would never be sitting on the ground outside “having a beer”. A Geisha is a highly trained woman who only would be seen by very few, who could afford to see their entertainment. They always wear a white face make-up, they never went out into the general public.These women without make-up they are simply a Japanese woman, wearing her best clothes. The girls playing music are also not Geisha (note lack of white make-up). The young girls with the cat, are probably young girls in training for Geisha.
Geisha’s were not prostitutes, but were woman who lived to entertain others. Although I have heard that many became concubines for the emperors, but he was the King and I guess you don’t say no to royalty. lol
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Another ‘expert’ who watched Memoirs of a Geisha and now knows it all. I suppose you’ll be educating us all from tha Davinchi Code next.
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Laura I’m sorry to disapoint you, but the “geisha” you are referring to,who “always wear a white face make-up”, and who is “a highly trained woman”, it is just a modern construction. Those attributes begun to define a geisha, only after Meiji, when other high level prostitutes as tayu and oiran disappeared. Thus, geisha assumed from that period on, many functions which were attributed to high level prostitutes (most of all from Yoshiwara) before Meiji. Edo period geishas were more worldly and common, than the stereotyped one you’ve mentioned.
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Oh I am so sorry I forgot to add that I love your pictures they are awesome! Very nicely done and thank you for sharing them.
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NICE!
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I hate the effect.
I’d rather look at these pictures without the very distracting and disturbing movement. Looking at them with a stereopticon they would not be jumping around like this.
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They would be if I was banging your whining head off the wall at the same time.
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…with my clenched fist being that wall….
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You forget the high incidence of earthquakes in Japan:-)
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Another good way of seeing 3D images is to use a program to mirror the left image. After you have the two images on the computer screen use a hand mirror held to the side of your nose, you should now be seeing the left image in the mirror and the right image of the screen at the same time. The advantage of this way are listed.
One no flickering image. Two no crossing of eyes. Three no distortion of image from using red and blue glasses. The drawback is you will look goofy holding a mirror on the side of your nose. The results of this method are good. Use caution while using mirror.
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for those who are complaining about the use of the word ‘geisha’, i would guess the captions are taken from what the photographer called the photos.
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Lol this is very stuped
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Oh, the irony…
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And, predictably…someone is OFFENDED! ENDR, “just a thought”, did you ever think that this guy took pictures of geisha because, well, you know…that’s what priviliged Japanese artists would choose to photograph? No; it’s got to be “racism” or “stereotyping” or whatever else it is you’re bitching about. People like you will ruin anything- a gorgeous set of photographs from a world that literally does not exist anymore, and you have to come here w/ some bullshit pseudo-Marxist rhetoric about a Japanese photographer stereotyping OTHER JAPANESE!!! Go pound salt up your ass, and learn to appreciate things of beauty w/out making it into some goddamn “cultural studies” thesis. Moron.
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Timothy (and Geisha Girl), you’re way too emotional about this. And your sensibilities seem to be overly delicate. What does it matter if someone thinks the term ‘Geisha’ might have been overused? Is it really worth ramping up the aggression to such a pitch?
As for bitching, your tone is a lot bitchier than any other person’s here. Pound salt up your ass?
If you’re not careful, someone might mistake you for a bullying, embittered, no-life loser.
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Laura, too- it’s just terrific that the one thing you people can fixate on is that there might be a “hate crime” going on in the insensitive, chauvinist and- what’s that term Said coined?- ah yes, “Orientalism” expressed by the captions to the goddamn photographs. Unbeleivable! Perhaps if we added a caption to the “geishas” saying in thought bubble “Math is tough” then you’d really have a coniption- or even a point. But as is, it’s just typical mindless political correctness from people trained to take offense and find it wherever it be- and often, where it not be. Disgusting, and giving bad names to “liberals” everywhere w/ reflexive, pedantic and ultimately pissy complaints about something that is really absolutely nothing at all.
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Well said that man. To admire these lost treasures and then read the pedantic comments of the morons on here really took the shine of things.
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Nice! :)
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Wow, this is amazing, I’ve seen stereoscope images used for things like mapping, but I’ve never seen them used to capture daily life. Thanks!
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Really amazing. I somehow feel like I shouldn’t be blown away, but I am. The photo choices in which to make use of the process were excellent!
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Excellent job, really a marvellous was to see 3D without any of those annoying glasses/mirrors/boxes. Well done!
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Wow, this was amazing…thanks for posting them…and in colour too!
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Try a 60 hz refresh rate which should make it a still stereo
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For the couple of armchair Japanese experts who read Wikipedia after reading Memoirs of a Geisha and came here to complain about the captions, try doing a little research on these photographs and you’ll learn something about the Geisha modeling in them. No need to return and apologize, though, the rest of us have spent our time enjoying the images and had some schadenfreude at your expense.
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Speak for yourself, petty sadist.
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Very nice effect. I would say it looks three-dimensional!
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It looks to me like one of those “clam diggers” really a geisha in disguise.
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wow, that almost——not quite, but almost——sounds like a racial and or sexual slur! Everybody duck before the PC Nazis inavde this thread!!!
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‘Incoming clam diggers sir!’
‘Soldier, I order you to shoot to kill those filthy, clam diggin whores!’
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these are exquisite photographs! love it! :)
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Beautiful, simply stunning images from a time long gone by
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really excellent…come alive!!
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fascinating….some images really connect with my early memories, like the wood cutters- I had a doll like that when I lived in Tokyo as a little girl….no western clothing visible in any of the shots…I remember a procession of Buddhist priests like the one shown…and really interesting to see the Nikko road/Chujenji mountain shots. Amusingly self referential with the Geishas looking at stereo images.
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These images are not presented in cross eyed view, they are in parallel. To ‘free-view’ them, you must stare through the images fixing you gaze at a distant point until they merge, just like those ‘magic eye’ pattern pictures. While it would be nice if these images were presented in cross eye format, they are not.
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Would’ve been a lot more effective to simply line up the right and left images next to each other, R on the left side and L on the right, for a cross-eyed stereogram.
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Actually I really like the presentation. Quite close to the real thing :D
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Yeah, it’s awseome this way, I am between wondering how strange our seeing-apparatus is that it gets fooled by something like this and being deeply impressed by this 3D-journey back in time (for some reasons 3D feels more real than photo or film …).
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These photos are amassing! Likeing it very much by me!!!! More 100 yers old is spectakeculer.
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wishing that the flicker rate was just that little quicker….
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Seeing these old scenes in 3D is amazing.
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Amazing…
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beautiful pictures, it captures a way of life i wish i could live.
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A great insight. I didn’t know 3d-photography had such a long history!
William: I’m not so sure about that ;)
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I believe that the caption of the ‘buddhist’ priests is in error. I thought the religion in Japan was Shinto.
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true, shintoism is one of the religions in japan. however, buddhism is equally present as a major religion, more recently joined by chrisitianity and perhaps minorities of other religions.
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REFFI: Actually Japan has Shinto for births and weddings, Buddhism for funerals and spirituality. Shinto is older in Japan, basically a grown up animistic tribal belief system where the Emperor has been raised into a diety, but Buddhism has been practiced there since the mid 400’s (AD).
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Alejandro Rozitchner me invitó aquí, y gracias a él pude ver tanta belleza.
¡Saludos desde México!
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Great pictures, but those are not Geisha. When the pictures were taken, many non-Japanese considered anyone who wore kimono – Geisha. They are just regular women and girls.
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Thanks very much indeed for these rare and beautiful 3-D images of Meiji era Japan. Truly a feast for the eyes.
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great pics take it the sumo rear left walked in halfway
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Nice, love the color.
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Il est formidable de pouvoir admirer des oeuvres si anciennes et déjà en stéréoscopie. J’aimerais en voir plus car j’adore les effets en relief pour la photographie. Cela nous donne un aperçu de ce que sera l’image en relief à la télévision…
Merci de ce site
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Love these!
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These photographs are incredible. Japan is one of the most beautiful places in the world.
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Nice collection, but nothing can replace large (enlargement of stereo take) stereoscopic pair of images (R&L), and viewing stereo copy pairs (L&R) through the stereoscope is a kind of alienation. The point is that knowledge of stereoscopic viewing (X3D) that offers chance to participate in a group watching of stereoscopic image to more observers simultaneously, to comment what they see and to communicate! There are links to recent event of this kind:
http://www.ns-dubrava.hr/modules/dOrg/index.php?op=view&deptid=2&pageid=769
http://www.akademija-art.net/content/view/2467/1/
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Wow! A friend just sent me this link to your page!
Thanks for a fabulous post!
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Incrivel!!!!! Very very good 3D???????????????
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The ground is shaking ! Godzirra !
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I actually MIGHT have enjoyed these photos if I could have just LOOKED at them, and not gotten sick to my stomach within seconds. I also have vertigo, so maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but you’ve ruined some dramatically historic photos, and it’s a bloody shame.
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then click the link provided under each picture you idiot.
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old japan looks cool.
now if only there are samurai pics.
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you made my day! this is gorgeous!!
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Cool. In a very near future, when all the computer screens has 3d capabilities we can see all this ancient photographs taken by visionary people. Thanks a lot from their future :)
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Un gran legado para la historia y memoria fotográfica de Japón.
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Cooool!
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Exquisite, sublime… I have no words that haven’t already been used here. Thank you so much for sharing and bravo to the inventor of animating these as GIFs so that we can all enjoy them.
And to all the naysayers, Geisha ‘experts’ and those who contribute nothing, why dont you post links to your work instead so we can judge your worth for ourselves.
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Geisha girl, you’re such a thug I bet you’re in politics, or at least wishing you were. Here is a revelation for you; PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO OPINIONS THAT DO NOT AGREE WITH YOURS.
Think about that please and stop poisoning the atmosphere.
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Ummm, “Expert”…I think she asked for a link, not just more invective.
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This is absolutely amazing.
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Seriously, the way the imaged come to life is astounding. I love this.
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I was born in Japan in 1952. While growing up, a bit of the old Japan still existed. It has all passed away but the memories remain as treasures in my mind.
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wow! very cool! i guess you could say that stereograms were the first gifs.
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Ridiculous! Is everybody crazy?All I can see is a lot of photos shaking. No 3d visual experience for me! It’s a crap!
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Muito legal esse efeito … e magníficas imagens do Japão antigo …
:-)
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cooool :)
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I like it.
The shaky animation makes them feel more real,
like you’re actually there seeing the scene.
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I’ve travelled a lot through different Asian countries and so Japan is a must see for me in the comming years. This incredible pictures of ancient Japan urges me to bring my dream into reality. Thanks for sharing the beautiful motives with us.
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Very great animation work. I really like the work of t. Enami, but I´d never imagined this way.
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Interestingly, the effect works using only one eye; I would like to hear from those who have sight in only one eye, whether the effect works for them, and how long ago they lost their sight. Best wishes.
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I only have 20/20 vision in one eye – the other is blurred, and these worked, even when I closed my blurred eye completely. But seriously, if it worked for you with one eye closed, why would you think it wouldn’t work for me?
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Amazing! wonderfull!
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Photos en 3d extraordinaires pour l’époque.
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EXCELENTES FOTOS QUE NOS HYACEN RECORDAR LOS NOSTALGICOS TIEMPOS DE UN PASADO QUE NO VOLVERÁ
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Really excellent. Never seen this technique before. Strangely enough, with a little effort some of the photographs can seem quite 3D. I particularly liked the sympathetic colouring. Very nice.
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It looks more as if someone tried to create the parallax effect with digital photo manipulation. The far-away background often “moves” much more than it would be expected. Distant things should “move” the least. Think of the moon, and how it seems to be fixed there, no matter where you go, whereas buildings will go passing by, the closer they are to you, the “faster”. Or try look at two objects, one somewhat close to your head and another a bit farther apart (your hands, for example, but make them still); then strafe your head half an inch from side to side and see how the object farther apart “moves” much less than the one that is closer.
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Beautiful stereowiews. Never see such 3D animations.
Taihen arigato.多謝。
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WOW this was really cool and i am glad i visited this site –thanks VSL for another wonderful site !!!Merry Christmas everyone -marylou
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I love these pictures. I really feel like I’m in Japan inthe early 1900’s. Thank you Very Short List for the link. And thank you Pink Tentacle….amazing!
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THAT WAS SOOOO COOL! i wish i had a stereoscope, then i could do something like that.
thanks for the website!
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These are just amazing!!! Thank you so much for sharing!
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Does anyone know a reason why this technique cannot be applied to modern 3D movies, released on DVD? The trick would be to speed up the switch rate rate beyond the capability of human perception (I would guess that half the monitor refresh rate would be context sensitive to the hardware, but likely suboptimal). To test this idea, I would like to try the above as displayed here, except with a very high switch rate, but none of my hardware is capable.
This is quite an excellent page and idea you have here.
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Re; Geisha/No Geisha
I guess that 70 years on this planet has taught me to look for the simplest answer. Because the photographer, T. Enami, who was chronicleing late 19th- and early 20th-century life in Meji-period Japan, was a contemporary of those women and he captioned them as Geishas… He’s probably correct and people living in this century are simply making educated or, in some cases, uneducated guesses about their professions and/or community standing. Nobody is doubting the Sumos or the Buddha…why fiddle on about the women?
The truth is simple and the argument sure isn’t worth the acrimony being heaped up here.
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Thanks so much for putting these up on the web for us all to enjoy – and also to whoever took the photos in the first place of course. Despite anyone’s misguided attempts to impose modern-day political views upon these historic photogrpahs they remain a fascinating record of Japan a century ago.
If there was any way that the original pairs could be made available for those who wish to view them stereoscopically, it would be marvellous ! All kudos to the person who turned the pairs into animated GIFs, so we can appreciate each as a single image – a bit like using a ‘blink comparator’ in astronomy – but having access to the original pairs would be ‘the icing on the cake’.
Once again, thanks.
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I love these.
Especially those representing places I’ve visited – The Inari shrine for example.
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I’m surprised by all the people saying many of these women aren’t geisha – all the photos labeled as geisha do certainly appear to be. The elaborate hairstyles, large obi, and sometimes makeup give it away. Geisha would often socialize together in public during the day; the pair in question drinking beer, however, were probably either photographed for art’s sake, or for a client.
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It’s weird to know I am staring at people who have been dead for a couple of hundred years.
it’s ultimately surreal
amazing photos. great tot hink they were all hand dyed too. but I think i’d prefer to see them through a stereoscope :)
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Geek (and others): Speeding up the animation wouldn’t work, the images would just blur together until they looked like they were superimposed, but at the slower speed your mind sees it as if you were moving your head from side to side.
Buckaroo: The distant background jumps around because the cameras weren’t pointing parallel but were focused at a near object. The object at the focal point will remain still while objects nearer and farther will appear to move. For example, in the picture of the firewood dealers the focal point is very obviously the woman in the front. You’d get the same affect if you could focus your eyes on a near object (say your finger in front of your nose) then wink each eye back and forth without changing focus. Or point straight ahead with both arms then cross your arms in front of you. Where your arms meet would be the focal point (if your eyes were shoulder width apart), where your two fingers are now pointing in the distance would be the background image for each eye.
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Buenas imagenes 3D saludos desde mexico
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Why is the sumo on the left transparent ?? Is he a ghost or what ?
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Nice views, but the animation is giving me motion sickness.
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How cool! I find these MUCH easier to see in 3-D than the static versions here. I particularly enjoy how clean people look compared to Americans and Europeans in photos of the same era.
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hey can someone explain how to merge 2 pictures into 1 gif like those japan ones what program to use ? i have 2 almost identical images but how to mix them help tips ?
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I have been fascinated by Japan since I was lucky enough to visit back in the mid 80s. Thanks for the images they are fascinating
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I have several pairs of stereo pictures and would also like to try this technique – any one out there got any ideas as to how it is done?
thanks
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it’s really amazing! i love it so much!
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