Cool Stuff: Take a 360-Degree Panoramic Photo with the Camera Ball

Friday, October 21, 2011

Take a 360-Degree Panoramic Photo with the Camera Ball

Coolest Gadgets

What you are seeing here is not some spherical shaped Rubik’s Cube, but you are right in assuming that those glass circles are cameras. It has 36 cellular phone camera sensors in all, and the green pieces around it are Nerf-like foam.

This is the camera ball, designed by Jonas Pfeil, and its purpose is to take 360-degree panoramic pictures. The user tosses the ball in the air, and it takes a picture when the ball is in apogee (the point where the ball is stationary at the top of its throwing arc).

As you can see in the video, the camera ball can take some pretty impressive pictures in the right surroundings. You will note that some of the video shots look a little like something like the bullet time of the Matrix. I honestly hope that the user has the ability to do that.

You will note that it is possible to see more of the shot after the ball has been “developed”, for lack of a better word. For example, the picture of the family in the canyon from the video shows climbers on the big and tall rocks. I would not be surprised if the people at the scene didn’t notice them at the time.

I suppose that this camera ball is doing something that we have been trying to do since the invention of photography and video, to preserve a memory. My Source did not have a release date or price on this, so I am assuming that this is a concept for now.