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From Where to Where?
The inter-ocular distance is a very important number in stereo movie-making: it is the distance between the eyes, or the cameras, with a typical value around 65 mm. It is frequently manipulated by filmmakers, however; more on that in a minute.
Although you can measure the distance between your buddy’s eyes within a few millimeters pretty easily, when we start talking about cameras it is a little less obvious where to measure.
It turns out that this question is much more significant than you might think as soon as you allow the camera vergence to change: if the cameras are tilted inwards
towards each other, the point at which you measure will have a dramatic effect. Depending on where you measure, the distance will change more or less or not at all.
The proper point to consider is what we call the nodal point, as used for tripod mode shots and panoramic photos. It’s not technically a nodal point for opticians. It is the center of the camera aperture, as seen from the outside of the camera. See this article on the pivot point for panoramic photography for more details.
The inter-ocular distance (IOD) is the distance between the nodal points of the cameras.
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