Sony Developing Single Lens 3D Camera

With all the attention being forced upon 3D movies and videos lately, you can bet the camera industry is working on ways to match any resulting demand for 3D video cameras. Most 3D video creation processes either require two video cameras, a video camera with 2 separate lenses or a time consuming trick where you capture the same thing twice from 2 different vantage points. Sounds complicated, I know, but Sony has announced a new camera in development that will shoot full 3D video with a single lens.

Not only that, but the new 3D video camera Sony is working on will have a frame rate of up to 240fps and have less problems with misalignment like you see in multiple-lens 3D film. Hallelujah! If I’m going to be forced to watch these 3D videos while executives continuously tell me how wonderful this is, I at least want to feel like I’m not having redshift déjà vu.

The advantage of the single lens system is that it captures the left and right images simultaneously so that they are perfectly synced, eliminating what those in the know refer to as “accommodation-vergence conflict.” You’ll still know it by the layman’s term: “That just don’t look right.”

But that’s not even the best part. The really great news is that you can easily view the video in regular old 2D if you want. You’ll still have to wear polarized 3D glasses to see the video in 3D, but if you don’t want to wear them (or, a more common problem in the future 3D living room, you lose the last pair of 3D glasses under the couch cushions) you can still watch the video without the glasses and not see a double-image. Sony says that the disparity between left and right images isn’t high enough to bother your eyes when viewing without the glasses but still provides a full 3D effect with the glasses on. Actually, Sony says the disparity is small enough to be recognized as blur, so it won’t be a great picture. You’ll just have to put up with a little fuzz around the edge of objects in the image, I guess.

That still sounds a little too good to be true, but if Sony can pull it off they’ll have my undying adoration (which is saying a lot since Sony has done so much to alienate me in past years). I want to be able to watch my shows in 2D if I just don’t feel like wearing the glasses… or I don’t feel like converting my electronics over to 3D compatible hardware. Either way.

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