Today the 3D reconstruction of faces is an actual task. It is being used in various fields, for example, in scientific research, in recognition, in video games and in the movie industry. One of the existing methods of reconstructing 3D models of faces uses stereo cameras. The reconstruction process usually consists of several steps: calibration of cameras, acquiring the depth map (disparity map) and the creation of the 3D model. In this paper a method of acquiring a depth map is proposed that can later be used for the reconstruction of a 3D model of a face. The proposed method was tested in a virtual environment- a 3D editor "Autodesk 3Ds Max" was used to create a virtual scene containing stereo cameras and a human head. The proposed method was also tested using two "VISAR" cameras, and an "Arduino Micro" microcontroller. "Arduino" software allows to ensure synchronization of cameras, when using the "Arduino Micro" microcontroller. The images are captured from the cameras by using the "FlyCap" program. Since the initial images contain distortions, the first step of the algorithm is the calibrations of cameras. For calibration, similar points are found on both stereo images. These points are later used to calculate the degree of distortion, and the images are rectified accordingly. The rectified images are used to calculate the depth map. The depth map is created from the front half-tone images of faces. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.