A “Wigglegram” From The Garden at Kyoto’s Shouzan Resort

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 180 — map & image datanearby photos
Animatable Wigglegram — sweep the mouse from side to side to view 3D effect
写真の上をマウスであちこちに動かすと「3D」な感じが出ます。

Photo Op at the Shouzan Resort (しょうざん)
Kyoto Japan

So, this is the next evolution of my attempt at what Wikipedia calls “wiggle stereoscopy”, but I hereby dub “Wigglegram”.

(Update: I now have a wigglegram category on my blog to collect related posts.)

My first rough attempt was posted the other day as a two-frame animate GIF. This time I've brought the animation control to the user: just sweep your mouse from side to side over the image to animate, as slowly or quickly as you like. I did something like this years ago for my “Cherry Blossom Timelapse: Fleeting Floral Fireworks” post.

The scene is from the garden at the Shouzen Resort (しょうざん), which I visited yesterday.

I still have much work to do to make these nice. Photoshop's “Auto Adjust Layers” wasn't helpful because I can't keep the camera level and it doesn't handle rotation (or, I should say, it doesn't handle rotation without also subjecting the photos to scale adjustments, which are not appropriate here). But it's still a neat effect, and much less annoying when you can control the animation directluy.

I think it's a step in the right direction. What do you think?

Continued here...


All 19 comments so far, oldest first...

This was much better. I love it.
Great possibilities. Now if you could just find a cute puppy playing and work it in, that could be neat.

— comment by Grandma Friedl, Ohio, USA on November 17th, 2012 at 11:07pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Nice. It makes me think of Lytro new perspetive shift effect.
Wigglegram it is !

Ah, yes, I forgot to add the “Who needs a Lytro?!” that I thought of while working on this. A Lytro looks to be a lot easier, though. 🙂 —Jeffrey

— comment by Luc on November 17th, 2012 at 11:08pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

User control and finer steps were the key! It looks really good now ( ^^)v

— comment by Damien on November 17th, 2012 at 11:23pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Very cool!

— comment by David K on November 18th, 2012 at 12:11am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

What a great effect! Incredibly effective – the wonders of the mind! I look forward to seeing more.

— comment by Paul on November 18th, 2012 at 12:41am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Very interesting experiment. It’s like cross between a QuickTime VR tour and an animated GIF. Looking forward to seeing more of these!

— comment by David Marx on November 18th, 2012 at 12:51am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Very nice – well done. The user control is much better than the previous animation.

— comment by Ed Rosack on November 18th, 2012 at 1:22am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

I heartily agree, this is much nicer! Will you explain how you did it? Even if just briefly…

All of the wigglegram pictures show up in the RSS feed, not as a wigglegram, just a series that isn’t formatted very well. Just fyi, I don’t mind occasional hiccups. See here for what it looks like in google reader.

Taking the photos is a matter of mashing the shutter while at full 10 frames-per-second while swaying mildly. Presentation is via JavaScript, which is why it doesn’t show up in RSS well, because RSS readers strip all that. I could “fix” it by reducing my feed to a partial feed instead of full, I suppose, but that’s sort of anti-social. Otherwise, I’m not sure what else I can do. —Jeffrey

— comment by Justin on November 18th, 2012 at 3:24am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

This is awesome. One of the best things about it is that if you leave it alone it stays put, and you don’t need to wiggle it to enjoy it. Also, you can take the time to explore at your own pace.

— comment by Mark Sirota (Philadelphia, USA) on November 18th, 2012 at 6:35am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Daaaang, I guess that D4’s frame rate would come in handy. I had tried to see if anyone had moved in the frames, but couldn’t pick it out, which made me wonder. I’ll see what I can do at a lower frame rate (4-5 fps).

About the RSS, pleeease don’t switch to partial, I don’t tend to follow blogs that do that, but I do make a rare exception and would for your blog.

— comment by Justin on November 18th, 2012 at 7:37am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Very cool! And much, much less annoying than your previous attempts. You should….get ready for it…write a Lightroom plugin to enable people who don’t know Javascript to create their own.

— comment by Zak on November 18th, 2012 at 10:02am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Have you considered mounting the camera on a boom of some sort to keep the horizontal axis stable? I suppose that’s a lot more work and equipment than you might want to carry around with you all the time, but might be interesting for a studio set up…

Oh, yeah, I’ve been milling all kinds of ideas in my head. I’d think that you wouldn’t want the individual views to be parallel, but actually pointing at the subject in focus, so I’ve been thinking of mechanical ways to impart a slight amount of angular yaw as it moves. Also thinking of just buying a bunch of tiny few-megapixel cameras and mounting them on a stick (or a 3D grid, to allow for changes in up/down perspective as well). The possibilities are endless, though unfortunately my skill and time are not, so I dunno what will come of it…. —Jeffrey

— comment by James on November 18th, 2012 at 11:26pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

I like this better than the other ones.
It has a depth to it with out moving over the image.
Is it printable ?

Clicking through brings up a large version of the first one. They’re all Creative Commons “Attribution + Non-Commercial” licensed, so you’re free to use them as you like for personal use. —Jeffrey

— comment by Ed Pouso on November 19th, 2012 at 2:37am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Every once in a while I come across one of those images that flickers wildly, but gives a nice effect. I have to say that I much prefer your implementation with more than two images. A plugin that lets you select several images and generates javascript that cycles back and forth would be awesome. I could see myself creating these for fun.

Great job on that wiggle gram.

I bought some of the cheap red/cyan glasses on ebay for creating 3D pics in photoshop using the anaglyph approach.
I wonder what it would look like if I made a set of anaglyph images in photoshop using several images in succession and then combined them into your wigglegram? That might be kinda cool. I’ll let you know if I do it.

— comment by Brad on November 19th, 2012 at 12:22pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

I still remember the first time I saw the Gap ad “Khakis Swing” in 1998 (look for it on YouTube or Vimeo). I sat forward on the couch and said to myself, “Wait, what?” My brain just couldn’t piece together how it was done. (That was before TiVo and way before YouTube, so it’s not like I could just play it back over and over again!)

In that case it was multiple cameras along an arc all pointing at the same spot. You (or I) could rig up a slider along a curved track. To find the center of the arc, mount strings at both ends which are the length of the radius, where they cross when taught is the center.

I love the idea of doing this along two axes, but that’s considerably more complicated!

I want something small I can carry along when I’m out with the camera; the novelty factor will wear off quickly, but the storytelling factor (“check out this amazing…”) should remain if I use it appropriately. I’ll post a few more soon from the same Shouzan outing… it may well just be a matter of my learning to arc steadily with the camera. —Jeffrey

— comment by Mark Sirota (Philadelphia, USA) on November 19th, 2012 at 3:32pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

I meant is it possible to print the combined images once you find the look you want.

There’s no “combined images”… only one image shows at a time. I could make it so that when you clicked, the large version of the image currently showing is brought up, but I haven’t exported large versions of them all, and that’ll likely get pretty heavy if I do. I’ll give it some thought… —Jeffrey

— comment by Ed Pouso on November 19th, 2012 at 4:13pm JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

You might consider using a stereo image viewer to simultaneously look at 4×6 prints of the two images. There are various inexpensive models listed on Amazon.com. Also, there is a good intro article at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy. Regards, Tom

— comment by Tom in SF on November 20th, 2012 at 2:10am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

That’s great. Nice that this allows you to use JPEGs rather than 256-color GIFs.

Your pictures are Creative Commons; how about your JavaScript?

–Bill

The JavaScript is pretty simple mundane stuff… I consider it public domain. —Jeffrey

— comment by Bill on November 20th, 2012 at 4:12am JST (11 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Very cool! It would be better to see some indicator while the images are loading and only show the working wigglegram when loading has finished – otherwise the effect might go unnoticed due to bandwith limitations, loading time and /or misunderstanding. But very cool work indeed!

— comment by Frank on January 3rd, 2013 at 4:06pm JST (11 years, 4 months ago) comment permalink
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