P3D Red/Blue vs. Red/Green

[Ray Zone <r3dzone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Alderson wrote:

(digest 3503):
>Why are most of the anaglyphs today
printed or displayed in red/blue and not in red/green like in former
times?<

>... as I saw it, the thing that biased the market in favor of red/blue
(really, red/cyan) was the color anaglyph TV craze of the early 1980s.
When the fad faded, due to the inherent disappointments of NTSC
anaglyph, there was a huge stock of red/cyan glasses left over. (Many
were destroyed, and some fierce animosities against 3D born, but that's
another story.) Anyway, at the same time, largely thanks to the
aforementioned Zone, the 3D comic was reborn. For a long time, it was
economically impossible to use anything but the red/cyan "surplus." By
the time it was used up, there had been a preconception built that
continues today. And certainly, it is still driven by the appeal of
color anaglyph.<

Ray Zone responds:

Tony is correct.  Miles of red and blue lens material had been manufactured
by 1983 to 3-D Video specifications which were created for polychromatic
anaglyph.  So for years afterward much backwards engineering was necessary
to make the anaglyphs work with this fairly light blue lens that was
commonly available.

Tony wrote:

>Of course, red/green anaglyph is still around, especially, it seems, in
Europe. Some of the best anaglyphs ever made have been done with
red/green, especially if you value extinction and stereo effect.<

Ray writes:

The 1950's 3-D comics also used red and green lens material.  So, what's
the difference?

Blue has a very narrow bandwidth on the optical spectrum (from about 480 to
490 nanometers) whereas Green has a much broader bandwidth (from about 490
to 570 nanometers).  And that makes Green much more efficient at
subtractive filtration, the active principle behind the printed anaglyph.
The narrow bandwidth of Blue, its inefficiency, is precisely what makes it
valuable for polychromatic applications.  It allows visible transmission of
a broader range of colors.



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