Naturally, the left and right images of a stereo image must be of comparable quality for the resultant stereo image to be of satisfactory quality. This means that not only must the images be in focus, but factors such as the brightness, contrast, resolution and of lesser importance, aperture and photodetection system, must be preserved between the two images. As several of these factors are dependent on the environment of the images and the construction of the camera, the best way to ensure that these factors are kept as constant as possible is to use identical models of camera when taking the images (as in Section 2.2)7.
This is borne out by simply qualitatively observing images taken by an Indycam
and an
cam -- the images from the
cam
look much crisper, more balanced and much better overall. As such, mixing images
from Indycams and
cams would almost certainly result in
poor quality stereo images.
In addition, there are at least two different models of Indycams, with one producing qualitatively better images.8 Upon inspection, the two different models have different lenses, and most likely different CCD cameras and perhaps other componentry. Naturally, the better quality Indycams are preferred, and Indycams of the same type should be used to obtain the best overall image quality.