See the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake in Color and 3D

[Silversurfer]

Adrian Covert — The 1906 earthquake that took place in S.F. was epic for the time, leveling countless buildings, igniting fires, and generally causing chaos. It was also responsible for some great photography. But did you know that someone took 3D color photos of the aftermath?

Fredrick Ives, an inventor who the SF Chronicle says created the halftone process used by newspapers and magazines, is the man responsible for these shots, which were viewed in a box called a Kromgram, which slightly resembled a Viewmaster:

The photos that Ives made were also meant to be seen in 3-D through a viewing device. "Can you imagine how shocking these were?" said Shannon Perich, associate curator of the Smithsonian's photography history collection.

Though black-and-white pictures of the 1906 disaster are common, the Smithsonian believes Ives' pictures are the first - and perhaps only - true color photographs of the wreckage ever made. They have never been published before.

A few color pictures of the earthquake and fire that followed have occasionally surfaced, but they were hand-tinted prints on black-and-white originals, not true color photographs.

The Kromgram came out in 1907 and cost $50 (or $1000 by today's standards). However, the Chronicle says that Ives marketed the device terribly and it failed. But hey, at least it spawned some shots that are simultaneously devastating and beautiful. You can see the rest of the collection over at [SF Gate via JoshuaClements].

http://gizmodo.com/#!5780400/see-photos ... lor-and-3d" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Likay]

Really 3d? The images aren't 100% alike but if there is any stereoeffect it seems unnoticeable.....

[PalmerTech]

The images seem like they are taken from quite a distance, it would be hard to tell with standard separation. Hyperstereo would have been better in this case.

[android78]

It looks to me like they are actually anaglyph, but not even true (captured in stereo with two cameras) 3D, but using a trick of multiple exposures for red, green and blue with rotating the projection a little between each one so that the objects at the bottom of the image come forward, and those at the top are further away. Have a look at the edges of the frame in the following picture:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/ar ... 088700.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I haven't got anaglyph glasses with me right now, but it would be interesting to check it out.

[android78]

Actually, I'm wrong. You do need to swap the left and right for cross eyed viewing though.
I think that it should be easy to open in photoshop and correct the alignment of the colour components though, and that would improve the quality.

[Fredz]

These images are not stereoscopic, at least it's the case for the two images that are referenced in this page.

I've taken several corresponding points on the two images at different depths (background, middle and foreground) and I've mesured the distance between them in pixels (with Gimp). In the first image the distance between corresponding points is always 343 pixels and in the second one it's always 341 pixels, so there isn't any parallax between the two images.

You can easily see that without measuring too, objects are always occluded in the same way in both images, you never see something in one image that you can't see in the other image.

I guess the journalist was mistaken by the fact that Frederic Eugene Ives was a pionner in stereoscopy and colour photography. He invented the Parallax Stereogram in 1903, a parallax barrier technique similar to the one invented by Berthier in 1896. And he also helped Leventhal and Crespinel create one of the first out-of-screen effect using prisms for the anaglyphic movies Plastigrams in 1922 and Stereoscopiks in 1925.

[Fredz]

It looks to me like they are actually anaglyph, but not even true (captured in stereo with two cameras) 3D, but using a trick of multiple exposures for red, green and blue with rotating the projection a little between each one so that the objects at the bottom of the image come forward, and those at the top are further away. Have a look at the edges of the frame in the following picture:

It's not anaglyph, it's an artefact of the technique used for color photography at this time. They used red, blue and green filters for exposing three black & white images, but most of the time there were color leakages on the sides, as can be seen on this early color photography taken in 1877 :

[cybereality]

Its BOGUS! Not 3D at all. These "journalists" don't even make an effort to check any of this stuff. Par for the course these days.

[Fredz]

What is more disturbing is that this error was also present in the original article from the San Francisco Chronicle that has been quoted by Gizmondo.

I wouldn't have been surprised to see such an error added by Gizmondo, as they are accustomed to the fact when they post articles related to 3D, but seeing it propagated by more "serious" media (San Francisco Chronicle, The Telegraph, Daily Mail) is a lot more bothering.

The original error came from a quote by Shannon Perich of the Smithsonian's photography history collection who said that "the photos that Ives made were also meant to be seen in 3-D through a viewing device". Seems that bad journalism is no longer an Internet-only thing...