A New Spherical View

A long time ago in a state not so far away, I backed a kickstarter for something called a Panono. The idea is pretty simple: Make a ball studded with cameras, snap a bunch of photos all at once, and then stitch it all together into a photosphere. Easy, no? The Panono was promised to be a 108MP camera with 36 cameras packed in a sub-grapefruit sized camera. It has been awhile, but the cameras are finally starting to get out to users and I was one of the lucky ones to receive one.

How did it turn out? Well, take a look:

That’s… pretty cool. I’ve been user of Google Photospheres for while on my phone, and while those can turn out alright there is a LOT of issues due to the time that it takes to snap the individual pictures. Ghosting, doppelgangers, guillotined people are all par for the course. It’s hard to put something together using those shots and the alternative is a DSLR with fish eye lenses and special tripod head. It’s all a pain to do because nothing is designed to look in different directions (until recently). We are just starting to see this tech hit the ground, but right now this is pretty much the best out there.

I’m looking forward to other opportunities to get out there and use this new camera in interesting places. 🙂

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