I had some fun with 3D, despite my lack of enthusiasm for the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time technology. Fujifilm updated last year’s 3D camera with a new model that adds high-def 3-D video capture. The company introduced the $500 FinePix Real 3D W3 at a news-media event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The company handed out the Real 3D W3 cameras for an hour or so and sent about 100 people into the museum’s dinosaur halls to do some snapping. How fun was that? A lot, I admit.
But the new Real 3D W3 is still a bit ahead of its time, despite all the hoopla about 3D TV going mainstream. For instance, I can’t view the photos or video I captured because it requires 3D TV or a 3-D-capable computer monitor (with glasses), and I don’t have either. The only way to print the 3D photos is through an expensive service from Fujifilm that costs $6.99 for a 5-by-7-inch lenticular print.
To see what would happen, I loaded the MPO files (the format for 3D images) into my desktop, but the computer could not read them. The 3D W3 camera does record a standard jpeg file, so I do have 2-D images. Nothing new about that, though.
You can view 3D images and video on the camera’s 3.5-inch autostereoscopic LCD, which does a decent job handling 3-D content. In the brief time I spent with the camera, its LCD displayed 3D images and video (without glasses!) reasonably well, although some artifacts and strange orbs of light sometimes marred the view. The camera creates 3D images with two lenses (each with 3X optical zoom) and two sensors. Despite extra components, the camera is pretty compact and weighs only 8.5 ounces (with battery).
The camera has an effective Auto mode for both stills and video. In fact, the only snag I encountered was figuring out how to play back video; everything else was intuitive. A dedicated button lets you easily switch between 3-D and 2-D capture, and there’s also a dedicated movie button. The camera also can snap regular 2-D images. As it has two lenses and sensors, you can snap simultaneous shots of the subject from different zoom ranges and colour settings, or record one image in monochrome and the other in colour.