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Those clever boffins at Sony have unveiled a new 3D camera that shoots at 240fps through a single lens. It’s certainly an interesting concept using a large lens ahead of a pair of mirrors that split the image into two light paths that pass through further relay lenses before finally falling on a pair of CMOS sensors. Sony say that one of it’s advantages is that the left and right images are so closely aligned that if you watch the 3D picture without any glasses the ghosting is so minimal that the picture is still viewable. This suggests to me that there is very little parallax (as you would expect with a single lens) so the 3D depth will be very shallow. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I just can’t see how this would work in many situations. I have also heard that Sony are working on real time hardware to take a 2D HD image and turn that into 3D. Those that have seen this say it is very convincing. Maybe this is the way 3D television will go forward, not with bulky and expensive cameras that are difficult to use, but with clever electronic processing. The latest Harry Potter film is being re-mastered into 3D using special software that analyses scenes and works out what is in the foreground and what is in the background.

You can read a more in depth article on the HFR-Comfort 3D camera by clicking here.

Whatever cameras appear and whatever technologies emerge it certainly looks like 3D is here to stay this time round. I will be running a 3D Master Class in Iceland early next year if anyone is interested in having a go in some spectacular scenery.