Official Fujifilm 3D W3 Photo/Video Camera

I have the 1st gen Fuji Real 3D W-1, does anyone know what the differences are between this next gen W-3 and my 2 month old W-1?

Looks like the built in 3D viewing screen is a little bigger. (Now 3.5 inches.) I know the W-1 can also play back still photos in 3D via a relatively inexpensive adapter manufactured by FUJI to a 3D TV. (Something like 70 or 80 dollars) Obviously the W3 having a 1.4 HDMI connection negates the need for an adapter. The W1 records still shots in MPO format but records video differently. My guess is that the new camera improves upon the video 3D capability for playback in a 3D TV and I don't know if there has been a change in the format in which video is recorded and/or if it is now at a higher resolution. I assume the stills are still recorded in MPO. I have had the W-1 since it first came out in the Fall of 2008 and have mostly taken still shots with it but have a few video clips on the SD cards. I doubt the W3 is any better for stills. I am curious though if I can interchange the SD cards that i have recorded data on from the W1 by inserting them in the W3 for playback to a 3DTV.

Thanks NorthTV,

I went ahead and pre-ordered it. If nothing else I can give the W-1 to a family member as a present.+-

The W-1 is really quite good once you get used to how to shoot 3D video. For pictures, it is the best, I no longer shoot with my digital SLR.

I see that a shipping date is now being confirmed. Apparently it can be in hand by mid September.

Here's Fuji's home page for this camera. I think I know what I'm getting for my birthday.

This Engadget reveiw doesn't have much good to say about the video quality of this camera.

"Viewing images on a Sony 3DTV via HDMI was easier on the eyes, but showed serious limitations to Fuji's video output. Images were dim and constantly flickering, and 720p video was grainy to the point of resembling VHS footage."

Other reviews seem to indicate bad low-light capability. Maybe I'll wait until this unit hits Best Buy. I'll be watching the reviews.

I went ahead and pre-ordered one as well. Amazon show that it will be in stock Sept. 1.

I hope that's accurate. I don't want to have to wonder for a month what the ETA is like I had to with my Mits adapter.

Amazon now shows it to be in stock. Got an e-mail that I'll get mine sooner than originally expected.

Joe,

The Fuji W-3 or W-1 for that matter do take some getting used to as far as shooting video or still images in 3D for that matter.

I found that you do indeed need full light to get the best results. The lower the light the more grain and the effect is ruined. You also need a single pole tripod to hold the camera steady. 3D is extremely susceptable to camera shake.

Also it is really easy to stick a finger in front of one of the two lenses by accident and if only briefly it ruins a shot, either still or video.

But with that said, once you get the hang of shooting 3D, judging distances, mulitple objects in depth of field, it is all worth it once you get it up on the big new 3D TV.

Since I got the hang of it, I have been spitting time between HD Camera and Fuji 3D camera, but when the W-3 gets here, I may try going exclusively with 3D, I like what it brings to the experience of looking at stills and video that much.

Does the 3D playback from this Fugi camera work with DLP TVs?

I figured as much, but the comments about the poor video quality had me concerned. I can live with a need for good lighting, if the quality is good when you take the time to make sure you have adequate light.

Any way you could post some 3D pics or video that you've shot?

Not sure how to do that, but tomorrow I will give it a shot. I do have some pretty cool pics and video even if I do say so myself......and I do.

Great. Nothing beats real world examples to gauge the quality.

I lifted the following from a review of the camera. Another review mentioned flickering as a problem during playback. I'm wondering if the slow frame rate for the 720p images (24fps) is not being handled properly, or if the reviewers had the TV set wrong for the camera's output. At any rate, that's definitely one thing I'd like to know about.

"The Fuji Real 3D W3 either in 2D and 3D modes of shooting, recording 4:3 or 3:2 still images to a maximum of 3648 x 2736 pixel resolution and 24 frames per second at 720p movied (1,280 x 720 pixels ) High Definition resolution, or 30 frames per second movies at up to standard-definition VGA (640 x 480 pixel) resolution."

The other thing I'm very interested in is the software that comes with the camera. What exactly does it do? I'd like to know if the files on the SDHC card can be viewed with 3D player software - from the camera's disc or maybe Stereoscopic Player - on a 3D TV. Or if the software allows you to create a 3D Blu-ray disc type file structure that will play on a 3D Blu-ray player. I know that's incredibly unlikely, but I'd like to be able to play recordings in 3D with something other than just the camera itself. I'd like to know how much effort that's going to involve.

Joe,

Both the Still pics and the Video 3D files are way too large to upload, they start at 2.4 mb and grow very large from there. And I am assuming that you need original MPO file formats in their original size to work, but maybe not, what do I know, not much. I tried to compress some of the stills and upload and this is what I got.

Can you give any direction on how I might try to resize the Original files and still get a file that can be loaded in to a 3D TV and displayed in SbS format like on my Panasonic VT25?

That's a problem, because I don't know much about MPO files. For the stills (which look pretty good, BTW - ) can you split them out into 2 JPEGs and post them that way? I can resize them in PhotoShop and create a 1920x1080 SbS image from that. (I'll be happy to post details on how to do that.) As for the video files, I don't have a clue what to do with them. I don't know how the Toshiba saves them internally. I did find a video that says the software has the ability to edit video files (Windows only), so I'm assuming there's some way to export them to some format for display, even if it's only from the camera. I read just a while ago that Toshiba will be selling a little HDMI player with a remote. You connect it to the 3D TV and insert the camera's memory card into it for playback. I'm hoping it can take an input from, say, an external hard drive via USB, but I don't have much information on it yet.

Joe,

The Fuji sells a tiny 3D HD Player for 49 bucks that takes the SD card direct from the Fuji camera and then hooks up to any 3D TV via HDMI.

It has a remote control that lets you select and play both 3D video and still images. It is 2 inches by 2 inches by less than 1/2 inch thick. In fact it sounds suspicously like the Toshiba

If you PM me with your email I can then send you the original files from the Fuji and you can get them in to SbS mode and hopefully do what you need to do to get them viewable. That's if you have an email service that will allow attachments that are 3 to 9 MB in size

PM on its way. I meant Fuji, not Toshiba. Sorry - brain freeze.

Create a dropbox account (2GB free storage) or hotfile account (2GB per file) and upload the original pictures (MPO) and 3D videos (AVI) there and post the links here.

Your pictures/videos are from the W1?

I just copy the MPO files to an sd or sdhc card (or use the card straight from the camera), plug the card into my Panasonic VT25 and get beautiful 3d images, using the photo display option on the TV. I was using a Loreo 3d lens on my m4/3 camera, but the Fuji works so much better with its 3x optical zoom and capacity to take photos in wide-screen 16x9 format. The Fuji L-1 3-D player, described in another post, is really weak when used with the W3; it won't play back 3-D movies and the 3-d still images show up as SBS, requiring you to go through a bunch of menu setting changes on the TV. Also, the software that comes with the camera doesn't do much, just cataloging and very minor video & stills editing.

So far, the only way I have been able to get 3-D movies to play is to connect the camera to the TV with an hdmi cable; files from the sd card won't play directly and won't stream from my computer through my Sony PS3, using TVersity. Everything else does stream, including the various 3-D trailers available on the web and Frank's videos.

Here are some SbS pics that I converted from JMAUSGP's Fuji MPO files. I found a program called MPO2Stereo that converts the MPO pics to left/right stereo pairs. From there, I used Photoshop to scale them to 1920x1080 SbS images.

AVS resizes these pics to 1280x720. They still look pretty good, but I'll be getting a DropBox account soon, so I can link to the full 1920x1080 files. They look spectacular on my Samsung 3D plasma. The shot of the coffee cups may cause a little eye fatigue if you view it as a Picassa slide show, because the divergence of the left/right pairs is a little too much. I see no ghosting of any kind in any of these shots. I'm sold on the stereo 3D still capability of this camera. It's great. I still want to know how well it shoots 720p video, but if it's anything close to the quality of the stills, I'm sold. I'll be ordering it soon.

And how did you arrange to get such up close and personal photos of these beautiful cars, Joe?

I'm looking forward to uploads of the full MPOs!

I'll post quick impressions of the W3 by end of day Saturday with a full review by next Friday (most likely sooner since I will be pumped to use it!).

I was able to view pics and video on my Mits. 65C9 (via the 3DA-1 adapter of course) directly from the camera.

The camera was set to SbS. I'm not sure if it will work with 3D mode because I was so happy to see my pics on the big screen, I quit experimenting. That's good enough for now but while I know it could be easier I just don't have the time to weed through endless threads looking for those special nuggets of info that makes it work with my other hardware.

As far as I can tell the software that comes with the camera is just their standard iTune style folder manager with online community stuff and some basic editing tools but nothing specially for 3D files.

Still working out the details of the Dropbox account. The pictures and AVIs are there.

Look forward to preliminary/advanced review of the W3, especially stereo video.

I have a W1 & W3. 720p video is very very good on the W3, much better than the video on the W1. W3 is lighter, LCD readout is brighter, bigger and more colorful. Ghosting is non exsistent on the W3, which could be a problem at times with the W1. Still picture resolution the same. W3 much easier to use. In short, the W3 is better than the W1 in most respects.

So far after only viewing pics and vids on the W3 display I'm loving it. I haven't had a chance to get them transferred onto my comp yet.

I'm still planning a more in depth review later this week.

I'll have 3D pics and vids from the Halo: Reach midnight launch next week to share with everyone here (I'll be in my Master Chief armor!). I've already got 2 fuji NP-50s and another off-brand one from Staples so once I get some more SDHC cards I'll be good to go

Which TV are you using to view the 720p video clips?