Thanks for your email. I photographed my best Lenticulations with a 1980-s era Nimslo lenticular camera, from which your Nishika is directly descended.
Processing the film is your first consideration. Your Nishika exposes a wider section of film than the standard 35mm frame. If you let your photofinisher develop your film as a standard 35mm roll, they will chop the roll up into manageable strips that will cut across your exposures! Instruct your photofinisher not to cut the film. I always give my film to an actual human being, and I insist he puts a bright orange "DO NOT CUT" sticker on the envelope. Don't just drop it in some mysterious box at the drugstore. While I'm at the counter, I also request the "DO NOT PRINT" sticker, because I scan my exposures (and the wide 4-frame exposures don't fit on standard-sized prints). When I pick up my film the next day, they hand me a small box containing the long roll of exposed negative film.
I achieve my best exposures with Kodak ISO-400 film.
At home, I unroll the film and carefully cut it into 6-inch strips, each of which holds two exposures (eight frames). I use this inexpensive film cutter
.
You can use scissors if you are very, very, very careful. Very. The 4-frame exposures are crowded together, it's easy to cut into one of your exposures. I lost a great shot of a guy on a ladder because of this. Very careful.
Why 6-inch strips, 2 exposures each frame? Because they fit into the film tray of the scanner I own, a Microtek ScanMaker i900. I modified my scanner's 35mm film tray to fit the wider 4-frame exposures. Don't have a 35mm film scanner to hack? Instead of 6-inch strips, you could cut out each frame, which fits in a regular 35mm slide scanner. Some flatbed scanners use a transparency adapter, which can scan negatives (you'll lose some sharpness, but don't lose any sleep over it). Or, talk to that photofinisher who put the "DO NOT CUT" sticker on your film -- he might be able to scan it for you.
Some tips on scanning: Scan at the maximum resolution and color depth your scanner supports. You may wind up with huge files, but you'll have more freedom to position and crop your frames. Keep a backup of your original scan. And take your time.
I use Photoshop to process the digital frames of my Lenticulations. I think any photo editing software would work. I cut and paste each frame into a single layered document, and align the layers for maximum stereo effect.
Align the layers so that the subject is the center of rotation. I think that Script Girl illustrates this well -- the subject's face is the point that I used as a guide to align my layers. When I'm happy with the alignment I crop the layered image to get rid of extraneous borders & junk, resize it to a lightweight 72dpi screen resolution, and export the individual frames as sequentially-named Jpegs.
There are many ways to animate Lenticulations. I wrote a JavaScript that rapidly rotates through a set of images. You are welcome to use it.
Another option is to create an animated .gif. You lose some color with the 8-bit format, but they are simple to create. You can find animated .gif utilities online.
Adobe's Flash is another option if you're into that kind of thing.
I'm sure there are other programming languages or programs that can rapidly flip through four images. I'm a web designer, so I use the stuff that I know.
Good luck with your photography class. Let me know what happens with your Lenticulations.
-Mat
