I’ve found the Instax Mini prints a great format to work with when making stereo-photos, and the cameras are fun to use, so I thought I’d write a quick guide about how you can take your own.

Instax Mini Cameras and Prints Prices

The Instax Mini instant cameras really vary in price, but you can pick up a basic second-hand one quite cheap now, such as a working Instax Mini 8 for around £20-£30 GBP, or even less if you’re willing to risk auction sites. You can also buy brand new cameras, which have many additonal features, such as the Instax Mini 99, which retails at around £175 GBP.

The packs of prints can also vary in price, but currently in the UK a standard pack costs around £15 GBP for 20 prints, although sometimes you can pick them up cheaper when they’re expired, but this can affect the quality.

Taking a Sequential Stereo Photo with an Instax Mini Camera

I thought I’d go right back to basics and make this as accessible as possible by using my dear old Instax Mini 8 camera, which has one button to open the lens and another to take the photo. It doesn’t even a tripod thread, so if your Instax camera has the luxury of one, you may want to ignore the ruler and table part in this post, and I’d highly recommend using a macro slider bar, like you can see in this tutorial.

You can go very back to basics and take the left and right photos free-hand. You just need to be careful, however, as the camera can be skewed or unlevel between shots, which makes it more difficult to fuse the photos in 3-D. I didn’t trust myself to keep the camera level, or not to get distracted by various animals, so I took a safe option of using a table and a ruler.

As my camera doesn’t have a tripod thread, I used a flat and level surface, in this example a table, and I used a sturdy metal ruler to both measure the distance the camera moved, and also to keep the camera level with the subject as I slid it between shots.

When you’re taking a sequential stereoview, you take a left image for the left eye, move the camera slightly to the right, and take a right image for the right eye. The distance the camera moves depends on how far away the subject is, but a good rule of thumb for comfortable 3-D depth is to move the camera from left to right 1/30th of the distance it is from the subject. In my stereo, the camera was 120cm away from the stereoscopes on the stool, so I should have moved the camera 4cm, but as I like exaggerated depth and breaking rules, I moved the camera 6cm from left to right (you’ll be pleased the know the stereo-police didn’t turn up and arrest me – although they still might when they see the quality of my composition and window violations in the resulting prints).

If it helps here, you can use the borders of the photos to label the left and right images.

Making Your Prints into a Stereoscopic 3-D Photo

Now you have a left-eye image and a right-eye image, what you do with them really depends on how you prefer to view things in 3-D. If you need any help viewing the images in 3-D, please see this post, and also to learn to free-view, please see this post.

If you like to parallel-view, such as by free-viewing, or by using a device like a London Stereoscopic Company OWL or a Victorian standard stereocard viewer, you keep the left-eye image on the left, and the right-eye image on the right. You can stick them to a mount or even to the wall, but maybe check with anyone living with you first.

If you prefer to cross-view, just make sure the left-eye image is on the right and the right-eye image is on the left. Again, whether you fix the images to a mount, or keep them loose so you can swap them depending on someone’s viewing preference is entirely up to you.

If you strive for perfection then you probably won’t be reading this post, then you can scan the images and use something like the free software StereoPhoto Maker to align them and put them in the ‘stereo window’ (please see here if you’re not sure what I’m waffling about).

Using Other Instant Cameras

You can of course try this with other instant cameras, and it depends on the size of the prints. The average separation between the human eyes is 63mm, so if you’re making a side-by-side stereoview in the parallel-view format, you don’t want to prints much bigger than this. This is because if the prints are too wide, you’re trying to make the eyes unaturally diverge out, which they can’t, and you will hear lots of moaning if the viewer tries. A single Instax Mini print is 46mm wide (photo only), or 54mm wide including the border. An Instax Square print is 62mm wide (photo only), or 72mm wide including the border, so these could also work well. A Polaroid i-Tpe print, for example, is 79mm wide (photo only), or 88mm wide including the border, so these can be difficult to view and fuse in 3-D as they are a bit too wide.

If you’re using the prints in the cross-view format, then you can use any size as you’re not restricted by the distance between the eyes like you are for the parallel-view format.

My composition skills in these photos won’t be winning any prizes anytime soon, but I hope it gives you an idea of how you can jump straight in with an instant camera and quite quickly make 3-D prints. Seeing your photos in 3-D is amazing, and using instant cameras is great fun, so I wish you happy stereo snapping.

And a very happy #StereoscopyDay

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