camera ball taking 360 degree panoramic photo

radiance-general
1

http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera

The camera ball designed by Jonas Prefli can take 360 degree panoramic
photo.

I wander how this device can be utilized in daylight research if it can
take HDR photos.

- Cheers, Ji

2

Cross-posting to HDRI mailing list. Please sign up and respond there.

Love the ball camera concept, but unless you integrate some HDR sensors, I don't see how you would do it. Even if you could program it to take multiple shots, it would be a challenge to align and stitch them. You would likely have to do the stitching first and alignment later, and motion blur might be a problem as well as parallax, depending on the time between shots taken near the apex of its flight.

-Greg

ยทยทยท

From: Ji Zhang <[email protected]>
Date: March 4, 2012 7:35:45 AM PST

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera | Jonas Pfeil

The camera ball designed by Jonas Prefli can take 360 degree panoramic photo.

I wander how this device can be utilized in daylight research if it can take HDR photos.

- Cheers, Ji

3

Hi Ji Zhang!

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera | Jonas Pfeil

The camera ball designed by Jonas Prefli can take 360 degree panoramic
photo.

I wander how this device can be utilized in daylight research if it can
take HDR photos.

- Cheers, Ji

Exciting...

The concept of throwing a camera (or 32 of them) into the air for taking
pictures makes it hard to shoot a series of images from the same
location - for later assembly into a HDR image. The device is using
small CCD cameras ("mobile phone cameras"). So the whole setup is
optimized for speed (capturing panoramic scenes with moving objects,
thus one-shot panoramas), not dynamic range.

One might translate the idea into something similar, allowing to shoot a
full panorama HDR image by combining cameras mounted e.g. on a tripod.
These either would need a very high dynamic range - or again shoot a
sequence at varying exposure times. Typically not that much of a problem
in daylighting (clouds are _usually_ not moving that fast). Question is
whether 32 mini-cameras are that much better in doing so then 3 proper
compact cameras with fisheye lenses, covering the same field (sphere) of
view.

Maybe to be discussed on the HDRI list? Cheers, Lars.