Olympus creates 360° camera lens

Wet Wet Wet sang that "love is all around”, but Olympus thinks that photography should be too. That’s because the firm claims to have developed the world’s first camera able to snap full 360° images. Olympus_360_lens Olympus' lens can see all around While the unique shooter has a horizontal snapping angle of 360°, it also …

[Andrew Wood]

The point is obvious.

Stick this on the top of a robot and then project the feed on the inside of a sphere. If you in the middle of the sphere you can see whats up, down, left, right, behind by just looking in that direction!

I should imagine with a little bit of software manipulation you could use two of them to generate 3D all around views.

Estate agents already use this type of thing to make those tours of houses where you can pan all the way around the room but they are limited by the up down field of view atm. Looks like this removes that limitation.

MS would also be able to stick this on top of their round table camera instead of using 5 CCD's.

I could go on.

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel queeeeeezy

errrrr

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is obvious...

No where is the software to make it a 360* whatsit?

[Andrew eaton]

Why not get a real 360 camera

how about a D3 from roundshot 470megpix or move

http://www.roundshot.ch/xml_1/internet/de/application/d438/d925/f933.cfm

You Just need £20k+

[Phil Parker]

It's not new

I have one of these in the loft designed for SLR cameras. It was at least 10 years old when I bought it a decade ago...

[Mark Eggett]

Not new

There's a few manufacturers in the CCTV and IP Surveillance field with similar (better) products and software to de-warp the image for easier viewing. Been around for quite some time...

[David Goadby]

360 camera

This has been done before but not with an integral camera. Usually, the camera points at the 360 mirror from below. The image is "corrected" using software. There is always a single point where there is no image.

See also http://www.0-360.com/