This rig is made with four mirrors and is basically
two periscopes turned sideways. Below is a picture of a small one
made for the Q-Cam using cardboard and wire. For the large one you
can simply bend some sheet metal into L-shaped brackets and duct tape the
mirrors to them. The brackets can then screwed to a piece of wood
for a base. The two outside mirrors should be able to be rotated a bit
for good viewing and you will probably need to bend the brackets a bit
to get vertical alignment correct.
6inch square mirrors cut from a single 1ft square
mirror tile worked well. This is perhaps a little bulky, maybe 3inch
squares would be okay but it is easy to align the bigger ones and may give
a better 3-D effect for the distances usually shot outdoors with a video
camera.
In fact during construction of the first one of
these I discovered something interesting. In order to get everythning
lined up it worked best to place my nose where the center of the camera
lens was going to be, aim the mirrors at the scenery and start twisting
and bending things into line. When I got it right the 3-D depth of
field of 8 or 10 feet associated with normal binocular vision was extended
to what appeared to be 50ft or more. Presumably this is at least
partly due to the mirrors giving an effective 15inches or more of separation
between eyes. At any rate when you get a good view in this fashion
you can then put the camera in place. It will probably be necessary
to rotate the outside mirrors to a bit less cross eyed position to
get the in the cameras viewfinder to look acceptable but the vertical alignment
should be okay. I mounted the camera to a separate piece of wood
which was in turn bolted to the mirror assembly. The whole thing
is of course mounted to a sturdy tripod. Be careful as it is easy
to tip over.