Patent ID: 8355627

Claim:
A stereoscopic camera system, comprising: a left camera and a right camera including respective left and right lenses a manually-actuated zoom mechanism to set a focal length of the left and right lenses a focus mechanism to set a focus distance of the left and right lens an IOD mechanism to set an interocular distance between the left and right cameras a foreground object distance sensor to sense, in near-real time, a distance to a closest foreground object a controller coupled to the focus mechanism, the zoom mechanism, the foreground object distance sensor, and the IOD mechanism, the controller configured to cause the IOD mechanism to set the interocular distance to a smaller one of a baseline interocular distance that is predetermined and fixed for the duration of a scene, and a maximum interocular distance automatically determined based on, in part, the focal length, the focus distance and the distance to the closest foreground object.