A mobile terminal and a method for controlling the operation of the same are provided. In the method, a screen including a preview image of a camera is displayed on a display module. Then, a preview window is set in a region of the screen and a predictive image of a three-dimensional (3D) stereoscopic image, which can be generated using images of a subject corresponding to the preview image, is displayed on the preview window. Thus, when images are captured to obtain a 3D stereoscopic image, the user can easily operate the camera using such a 3D stereoscopic image preview function.