Hasta La Gadget!

A couple of years ago we saw an unusual camera. It looked like a ball and took 360° panoramic photos, like the ones on Google Street View but completely spherical. Jonas Pfeil and his co-inventors are now gearing up to mass produce the camera, which they’re now calling the Panono.

Panono works much like the prototype we saw back then. It has 36 cameras that together can make a 72mp 360° image.  Panono can be used in three ways. The fun way is to throw the ball up in the air. The camera will sense when it reaches its highest point, and will automatically activate all of its cameras. You can also prop it up on a stick and trigger it using the Panono mobile app or just hold it in your hand and press its button to shoot.

Whichever method you choose, you’ll need a mobile device and an Internet connection in order to get the final panoramic image. That’s because the camera will wirelessly send the images it took to your mobile device. From there you need to upload the images to a free cloud service that will stitch your images together. If you don’t have an Internet connection, you’ll be able to view the images you took via the app, but they’ll be separated. The camera itself can store up to 400 panoramas (that’s 14,400 “normal” images) so you can still use it without a mobile device.

Pledge at least $500 (USD) on Indiegogo to get a Panono as a reward. You can check out the shots taken with the latest prototype on Panono’s website. Now someone needs to come up with a spherical picture frame.

Have you ever wanted to shoot the sort of 360-degree panoramic images found in Google’s Street View? While there have been numerous attempts to create add-on lenses to capture spherical images, this upcoming gizmo looks like it could be the best solution yet.

The Bublcam is a portable device that uses four cameras to capture a true 360-degree spherical image of your world. Each camera overlaps the field of view of the other cameras, and then its companion app stitches images together to create one contiguous picture.

Still image resolution for the Bublcam is 14 megapixels, and it can also capture HD video at 720p 30fps or 1080 15fps. Another cool feature of the Bublcam is that it’s got onboard Wi-Fi, so it can stream its 360-degree video in real time. You can also store your images and video on SD card or stream via its USB connection.

If you’re interested in checking out some example 360-degree video content from the Bubl prototype, you can find some samples here, here and here. While the prototype videos are far from perfect, they’re still an impressive demo of the potential of Bubl’s technology.

Bublcam is currently raising funds for production on Kickstarter, and has already surpassed its $100,000 (CAD) goal. A pledge of at least $449 (CAD) (~$430 USD) will get you in on the 360-degree action.

Sport and action cameras are big business, and even though there are a couple of main players, it doesn’t stop other’s trying to get a bite of the apple. Geonaute, however, have come at the situation from a different angle. Heck, they’re coming at it from every angle, with its 360-degree offering. Equipped with three 8-megapixel wide-angle lenses the camera captures an almost spherical field of view. This might initially sound like a strange idea… after all, who wants all of that in one video, won’t it all be warped beyond recognition? The short answer is no, in fact it’s much better than you would ever have thought, and we’ll explain why shortly. Going back to the camera itself, it looks a little like the innards of those security cameras you find in government buildings etc that peer at you ominously. However, in this case, the three lenses have color detail around them which makes them look anything but sinister, and the circular base section might look a little large, but in fact it’s light in the hand — and actually helps it sit quite comfortably atop a helmet.

In 360 video mode the advertised resolution is up to 2,048 x 1,024. In photo mode you’ll get single shot, burst and time-lapse modes with a top resolution of 4,096 x 2,048. The actual FOV is 360 degrees on the horizontal, and 150 degrees vertically, but the end result is a fairly complete viewing sphere. The 3,000 mAh battery should be good for two hours of footage, and the microSD card slot will take cards of up to 32GB. While there is a waterproof housing, the camera itself will take the elements on pretty well thanks to its IPX7 rating. Read on after the break for more impressions.

Continue reading Geonaute’s 360 degree sports camera catches all the action, even our hands on

Filed under: Cameras, Portable Audio/Video

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