Synthetic 3-d hologram with reduced dispersion upon reconstruction

Claim 1

A holographic method of producing a three-dimensional reconstruction of a scene comprising producing a plurality of representations of the scene at a corresponding plurality of viewing angles relative to the scene, said plurality of representations being produced at a plurality of locations at a substantially constant distance from a selected point in said scene, and said point occupying the same position in the field of view in each representation, making holograms from said representations on a common photo-sensitive sheet, each said hologram being made using a non-diffused object beam directed on to said sheet at an angle corresponding to the viewing angle of the representation from which is made and a reference beam directed at a constant angle on to said sheet for all said holograms, and forming a reconstruction of said holograms using a reference beam directed at said constant angle on to said sheet, the direction of said object beam being fixed and the photosensitive sheet being rotated about an axis to provide each said corresponding angle between said beam and sheet, the mean direction of the reference beam when making each hologram being oblique to the common photo-sensitive sheet substantially in a plane which is normal to said sheet and which includes the axis of rotation of said sheet.