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Hey Everyone,

When photography began people were amazed with the realism that a photograph could capture, and in fact to this day people still wonder at the true to life appearance of most photographic images. As this industry has grown the technology developed to capture the most representative images possible has only gotten better and better.

As good as any photograph can be it is never a perfect replication of what was actually in front of the camera, and the main reason for this is that it only recorded in two dimensions. There are tricks of composition that can make an image look more three dimensional (i.e. converging lines at the horizon, out of focus objects in the foreground, etc…), but inherently a photograph lacks the dimension of depth.

Back in 2009 Fujifilm announced the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W1 camera that captured 3D images that would be played back on the proprietary picture viewer designed to display these 3D images. This camera really never took off, and the main reason for this was that to view the 3D images you had to have Fujifilm’s 3D viewer.

This year one of the hottest new technologies in consumer electronics has been 3D TVs, and this trend has not been lost on Fujifilm. They recently released the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 digital camera that captures 3D images and 720p HD video to be viewed later in three dimensions on any 3D TV (with 3D glasses), on the cameras 3.5 inch 3D LCD (that doesn’t require 3D glasses), or on Fujifilm’s 3D picture frame (the FinePix 3D Viewer).

As good as this camera is at taking 3D images it also has an impressive 2D capability. Because this camera has two lenses, each lens can simultaneously record an image to their own separate CCD sensor. There are three 2D features that really stand out to me; you can set the camera to record a telephoto and wide angle image at the same time, you can have the camera record the same image with two separate color tonalities, or you can set the camera to record the same image at separate sensor sensitivities.

Many years ago I remember seeing a camera in a photography magazine that had four lenses, and took 3D images on 35mm film. The problem was you had to send your film off to a specific company; that company would then develop the images into the 3D prints. This was very expensive to get done, and the results tended to be disappointing.

I normally am not attracted to most point-and-shoot cameras; I have to be honest this camera has me wanting to try it out in the Rocky Mountains, and then view my images on a 50 inch 3D TV. The Star Trek fan in me is wondering if a holographic camera is just around the corner that captures our life experiences to be played back at a later date in the Holodeck installed in every home.

Happy shooting!