Giroptic: 360° panoramic digital camera
Making truly panoramic shots — that is 360 degrees — on an ordinary digital camera is possible but not easy. Now a new digital camera, which looks like something from science fiction although it is turned on its side to fit in the picture, has fixed that.
Giroptic has created what they say to be the world’s first truly automated 360° digital camera which takes high-quality panoramic shots with just one click. To use it you place the camera on its special tripod set the timer and press the button.
The picture is ready to use instantly, it can be uploaded to Giroptic servers to help create interactive virtual tours of the area that’s been photographed.
It costs a smidgen under $1,000.
This is a very specialized camera and the number of times you would want to use it are limited.
Professionals might see it as a way of presenting real estate or hotels or whatever, but for the amateur this is an expensive way to go and, in fact, gives you rather more than you want.
The Motorola Motozine ZN5 cameraphone has a widescreen ability built in and this can give you seriously good widescreen pictures, which is possibly all that you want.
And there are software solutions.
First of all you can do it in Photoshop. That is an expensive program and you need a bit of skill but it is built in and does work. In fact, it is probable that you can do it in any graphics program that handles layers.
Panorama Tools does it for nothing and you do not need much skill to make it work.
The question one keeps coming back to is: who needs it?
Commercially, you can make a case. I went with photographer Chris Wright to do it for a resort in Fiji. A special case. The director of the Sydney Art Gallery, the amazing Edmund Capon tried it on his Web site for a while. It was removed because users could not come to grips with it.
For ordinary users a guess is that, for the moment, a 360 degree panoramic shots is a refinement too far.
On the other hand, the widescreen (not panoramic) facility on the Motorola cameraphone appeals to me immensely and, more and more we will be moving to widescreens on our machines.
Do you need to take panoramic shots? Perhaps not just now.
Do you need to take widescreen shots? Yes, if you want to explore the boundaries of digital photography.
Related Posts:
