Quest for the South Magnetic Pole

Mark Pharoah, South Australian Museum

South Australian Maritime Museum

Dr. Paddy McGee, eResearch SA

During the 1908-1909 expedition to find the location of the South Magnetic Pole, stereographic photography was used to record various aspects of the expedition.

As part of the "Quest for the South Magnetic Pole" exhibition at the South Australian Maritime Museum, some of these stereo images are in display as red/cyan anaglyphs, allowing them to be viewed by groups of people at a time. The processing to convert the digitised copies of the original prints to anaglyph format was undertaken at eRSA, using the following steps:

• cut the left- and right-hand-side images from the digitised original
• clean / repair the images as necessary to reduce the appearance of spots, scratches and other faults
• adjust black and white levels, and gamma to improve the dynamic range of the images
• align the two images to provide a good sense of depth, suitable zero parallax, and acceptable ghosting in the final anaglyph image
• crop to suit a 4:3 landscape aspect ratio whilst maintaining the important sections of the image
• render as a single red/cyan image.

Using the anaglyph format for the displayed stereo images allows for flexibility (works with standard monitors and projectors), simplicity (only one standard projector or monitor is required), and robustness (allowing for touring the exhibition).