back to geekiness for a moment…
I bought the FinePix W1 camera from a shop in Kumamoto the other day, after seeing and playing with the demo unit it was hard not to buy it..
So I got it back to the hostel and started the unboxing process..
They pack an example print into the box, at some point they plan to run a print service but I dont think its working yet. The 3d effect on the photo isnt bad, the kids definitely stick out from the background. They probably could have used a better photo though
The usual bags of stuff, USB cable, power adaptor, manuals, CD and the camera of course 
The manual is entirely in japanese but its pretty easy to get the main points out of it.
And heres the camera itself, its quite a bit larger than a normal camera and much heavier. Keeping it in my pocket with my phone is causing problems. The front cover is a bit of a fingerprint magnets too..
Firing the camera up starts the setup process, it asks for your language – luckily in english – and time information. What you cant see in the photo below is that the blue highlight stands out from the rest of the screen
Its an effect used in all the menus too, although it can be turned off.
Taking photos with it takes a little practice, when on autofocus you need to keep the subject about 1-2m away otherwise the two images are too far apart for the 3d effect to work.
For close up shots you have to set the camera to “individual shutter” mode, it lets you take a pic with the left sensor, then move the camera a little and take another. It works really well if you have a tripod, its possible to get some good macro shots (10cm or so range) this way. I’ll post an example further down (in JPG format and MPO format in case anyone has access to a 3d screen…)
For the techy side of things
This camera uses a USB connection but in PTP mode rather than mass storage, so you cant just plug and go if you have a mac.. However iPhoto detects the camera but will only let you capture JPG files from the camera. It totally ignores all MPO files on there.
There is a workaround, if you have a Mac get macports installed and install:
You have to screw with your path settings in your terminal to get ports to work correctly but after that gphoto2 detects the camera and lets you view the file structure. You can dump all the photos using gphoto2 -L and it saves all images and videos.
Check this link for generic instructions on using gphoto2 on OS X
As far as I can tell the MPO file format is just two JPG files concatenated, in fact when you use quickview in Leopard it shows one frame of the image (but preview.app wont bother loading it at all). I’m guessint it loads the first JPG then ignores all data after the end markers.
I’m trying to knock up a Python script to split the files, further down the line I want to be able to combine the files again so I can create my own 3D stuff and port it to the camera 
Conclusion
Wicked little toy I just hope Fujifilm sort out the printing process so I can get some photos out IRL
August 12th, 2009 - 9:28 pm
exif tool claims to be able to extract the pictures from an mpo file:
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/
I would love to have this verified on mac os x, I’m looking forward to the US release of the camera….
August 13th, 2009 - 2:09 am
i’ll try that!
So far i’ve worked out that you can use python to search through the file for the second EXIF tag (each frame is tagged individually) and then use the linux command “dd” to copy from that point to the end of the file.
It yields JPG’s that are viewable by all the software I’ve tested it with (Gimp, Leopard’s finder, Preview.app, firefox, safari..) so maybe i’ll publish it
Next test is to concatenate two jpg’s and upload it to the camera..
Sure enough i’ve just tested exiftool and it can read the tags, whats handy is the “MP start” field, if i can use that in the dd command then that’ll speed things up..
ExifTool Version Number : 7.86
File Name : 2009_0810test0005.MPO
Directory : .
File Size : 8.9 MB
File Modification Date/Time : 2009:08:09 06:34:28+09:00
File Type : JPEG
MIME Type : image/jpeg
Exif Byte Order : Little-endian (Intel, II)
Make : FUJIFILM
Camera Model Name : FinePix REAL 3D W1
Orientation : Horizontal (normal)
X Resolution : 72
Y Resolution : 72
Resolution Unit : inches
Software : Digital Camera FinePix REAL 3D W1 Ver1.00
Modify Date : 2009:08:08 22:34:15
Y Cb Cr Positioning : Co-sited
Copyright :
Exposure Time : 1/15
F Number : 4.0
Exposure Program : Program AE
ISO : 800
Exif Version : 0220
Date/Time Original : 2009:08:08 22:34:15
Create Date : 2009:08:08 22:34:15
Components Configuration : Y, Cb, Cr, -
Compressed Bits Per Pixel : 4
Shutter Speed Value : 1/15
Aperture Value : 4.0
Brightness Value : 0.03
Exposure Compensation : 0
Max Aperture Value : 3.2
Metering Mode : Multi-segment
Light Source : Unknown
Flash : Off, Did not fire
Focal Length : 10.3 mm
Version : 0130
Internal Serial Number : FC A5211844 592D32323031 2009:07:28 C3A3101204F8
Quality : FINE
White Balance : Auto
Saturation : Normal
Fuji Flash Mode : Off
Flash Exposure Comp : 0
Macro : Off
Focus Mode : Auto
Focus Pixel : 1824 1368
Slow Sync : Off
Picture Mode : Auto
Auto Bracketing : Off
Sequence Number : 0
Color Mode : Standard
Blur Warning : Blur Warning
Focus Warning : Good
Exposure Warning : Good
Dynamic Range : Standard
Faces Detected : 0
Flashpix Version : 0100
Color Space : sRGB
Exif Image Width : 3648
Exif Image Height : 2736
Interoperability Index : R98 – DCF basic file (sRGB)
Interoperability Version : 0100
Focal Plane X Resolution : 5952
Focal Plane Y Resolution : 5952
Focal Plane Resolution Unit : cm
Sensing Method : One-chip color area
File Source : Digital Camera
Scene Type : Directly photographed
Custom Rendered : Normal
Exposure Mode : Auto
Scene Capture Type : Standard
Sharpness : Normal
Subject Distance Range : Unknown
Compression : JPEG (old-style)
Thumbnail Offset : 1492
Thumbnail Length : 9310
MPF Version : 0100
Number Of Images : 2
MP Image Flags : (none)
MP Image Format : JPEG
MP Image Type : Multi-frame Disparity
MP Image Length : 4690699
MP Image Start : 4683776
Dependent Image 1 Entry Number : 0
Dependent Image 2 Entry Number : 0
MP Individual Num : 1
Base Viewpoint Num : 1
Convergence Angle : 0
Baseline Length : 0.077
Image Width : 3648
Image Height : 2736
Encoding Process : Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
Bits Per Sample : 8
Color Components : 3
Y Cb Cr Sub Sampling : YCbCr4:2:2 (2 1)
Aperture : 4.0
Image Size : 3648×2736
MP Image 2 : (Binary data 4690699 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Scale Factor To 35 mm Equivalent: 5.6
Shutter Speed : 1/15
Thumbnail Image : (Binary data 9310 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Circle Of Confusion : 0.005 mm
Field Of View : 34.4 deg
Focal Length : 10.3 mm (35 mm equivalent: 58.2 mm)
Hyperfocal Distance : 4.99 m
Light Value : 4.9
August 13th, 2009 - 2:47 am
this works so far, it produces two usable jpg images but Finder wont preview the second image. It does load in all applications though..
Please feel free to correct my horrendous BASH skills
#!/bin/sh
echo $1
val=`exiftool -s -s -s -MPImageStart $1`
ddpos=`echo $val / 512 | bc`
ff=$1
file=${ff##*/}
fname=${file%%.*}
lname=$fname"_left.jpg"
rname=$fname"_right.jpg"
dd if=$ff of=$lname bs=512 count=$ddpos
dd if=$ff of=$rname bs=512 skip=$ddpos
August 13th, 2009 - 4:17 pm
If you look through the docs, the exif tool claims to be able to extract the actual stereo pair images as well as metadata (if you follow the MPO link it details various offsets for stereo metadata). Here it is: http://kobesearch.cpan.org/htdocs/Image-ExifTool/Image/ExifTool/MPF.pm.html
http://kobesearch.cpan.org/htdocs/Image-ExifTool/Image/ExifTool/MPF.pm.html
Could you put up a sample MPO file for me to mess around with as well?
August 13th, 2009 - 5:10 pm
It appears that
exiftool file.MPO -b mpimage2 > image2.jpg
will extract the 2nd image. (I found a crappy sample in this “review” here http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_details.php?id=18666 though I’d like to get a better example image).
I think there’s a bug in the extraction code as ‘mpimage1′ doesn’t work and ‘PreviewImage’ doesn’t work either…(which the code implies might be the place they are putting the 1st image? not certain without a closer look)
It might be worth filing a bug against this and submitting an example image file to get this fixed.
August 13th, 2009 - 5:49 pm
well thats strange, that doesnt work on my images. It seems to be trying to process “mpimage2″ as a file rather than a tag name. I’ll try playing with it later though. I’ll post an example image later too
I cant help but notice that the reviewer on that site seems to be a bit rubbish…
August 13th, 2009 - 9:00 pm
ha that’s why I put review in quotes… I did find a bug in the library, changing one line fixes it so it will output both mpimage1 and mpimage2 too.
Weird that it doesn’t work. Did you put a dash in front of it? If you just do
exiftool -mpimage2
it should respond with the line like in your example output:
MP Image 2 : (Binary data 4690699 bytes, use -b option to extract)
thus
exiftool -mpimage2 -b > file2.jpg
should dump the binary data
Well I’d be interested to try your files to see what’s different.
August 14th, 2009 - 11:28 am
Well I emailed the exiftool owner, the official way to extract the two images would be (assuming the original file ‘image.mpo’):
exiftool -trailer:all= image.mpo -o mpimage1.jpg
exiftool image.mpo -mpimage2 -b > mpimage2.jpg
January 20th, 2010 - 6:46 am
Latest version of STOIK Imagic 5.0.4 (http://www.stoik.com/imagic) can split MPO files such as made by FujiFilm FinePix Real 3D W1 into standard JPEGs, generate stereo pairs (JPS, PNS), and anaglyphs. STOIK Imagic is free, but some advanced features will require purchase of activation key after initial 30 days. Splitting of MPO into JPEGs is available in free version.