I ordered this camera to take 3D photography. The camera comes with two lenses that take pictures side by side. The distance between the lenses matches the normal human IPD making it perfect to take 3D photos that look natural when composited together. To test this camera, I took sample pictures and then composited them using software on my computer. When I looked at the picture taken by this camera through anaglyphic glasses, I was able to see a convincing 3D image. This is a solid camera that takes great 3D pictures.
S
S. A. Hughes
★★★★★
Nice stereo camera module with great specs
ELP-USB1080P3D02-H120 Stereo Camera
One of my main hobbies is stereo (3D) photography. There are very few commercial 3D cameras and most of them have serious limitations. I’ve been looking at USB cameras for a while with the idea that I might make my own camera. The ELP twin lens camera looks like it would make a good starting point. Its resolution is good, and its optics look nice.
The module I have has 120 degree lens and that’s not all that great for normal 3D. It’s better for VR. I am attaching a photo and a video that show the raw image quality of the camera and the way such a wide field of view distorts 3D. My tests show the two cameras are in sync with each other, which is very important for good 3D. I tested the power supply load, and the camera uses 180ma in photo mode and 240ma in video mode. Not bad.
I did have some trouble getting the camera to work when I first powered it up. It turns out it’s pretty sensitive to the USB cable. Some USB C to USB C cables would not work. I ended up using a USB C to USB A adapter to get the unit talking to my PC. If you have trouble getting the PC to recognize the camera, try different cable combinations.
I like the camera and my next task is to 3D print a case for it. Overall, I think it’s a good unit and reasonably priced for its capabilities.
G
GRETCHEN
★★★★★
Produces a single, wide frame output
This is a lovely stereo camera that worked right away with my Apple MacBook Air - no special drivers needed. If you are wondering how the camera delivers the stereo pair, it shows up as a single stream producing a 2560 x 720 image, with the image from the left camera on the left half of the frame, and the right camera on the right.
I opted for the very-wide angle version, which in hindsight was probably not ideal for the kind of stereo vision I want to do, but that's on me. The image is nice and clear; I do notice that the lenses are pre-focused and the threads are glued, so you can't adjust the focus, but for this kind of wide-angle lens that shouldn't matter.
It was pretty easy to interact with the camera; it just showed up as an available camera in Quicktime Player, and I was able to enumerate it in Python OpenCV with a little guesswork (you can access it as cv2.VideoCapture(1) or perhaps cv2.VideoCapture(0) depending on your system). I did notice that the Mac PhotoBooth app, which I often use to quickly check out new cameras, had a problem with the wide aspect ratio and cropped the image, but that's not likely to matter much to anyone.
Overall, a really nice stereo pair that's very easy to work with, and the synced left/right capture is invaluable to any real machine vision algorithms you might run. I uploaded a screenshot showing just how easy it is to work with using Python and OpenCV2, so if your curious about machine vision, this would be an excellent camera to order.
J
J. Mateo Baker
★★★★★
Pretty good 3D camera for PC only
As a hobbyist camera, this is pretty amazing. At 68MB/s, the 3840x1080 60fps video you can capture with this is astonishing. And it's surprisingly good, reasonably strong in low light taking impressive resolution.
There are faults in the picture. There's a rolling line of dropped resolution that moves up through the frame. In the still frame I captured, you can see the stripe of pixels that are much larger than the rest of the image, and these stripes move throughout the video. Because the circuits are exposed, you can't use this camera with an electronic mount. I first tried taking pictures with this camera by putting it in an electric gyro-mount I use for my iPhone and while the mount was on, I couldn't get images from the camera. As soon as I turned it off, the picture returned.
Also, for some reason I could not get this to work with my M2 Max MacBook Pro. Usually my go-to for video work, ffmpeg just plain refused to get me anything more than 5 fps. I thought maybe it was a fault with the camera, but when I plugged it into my Windows 10 PC, suddenly I was getting gorgeous, buttery 60fps at full resolution. I don't know why my M2 failed so hard where my AMD-based PC used it incredibly, but it's certainly something for hobbyists to be aware of.
In short, as a hobbyist camera, this is pretty amazing. FFMPEG spotted it immediately, it has a variety of resolutions available, can go from 5fps to 60fps and can maintain that 60fps even at max resolution of 3840x1080 which is a really astonishing resolution to push through a USB 3.0 plug. It has a few flaws with the video stream, but for the most part it works really well.
Ron Widitz
★★★★★
Stereo vision; functions well and versatile
This camera provides terrific resolution and dual sync-ed lens. It's very easy to interface and plug-and-play foolproof via USB. Both Windows 11 and Linux recognized it immediately and there was no set up needed to leverage with different capture software. Video and still photos generated images where the left-hand camera shot was immediately next to the right-hand camera frame. Both video frame rates and image resolution are just as the device specs state. I'm happy with this product and recommend it.
