Written on July 1, 2008 – 8:08 am | by Bogdan Alex |
Olympus is a respectable photo camera manufacturer that didn’t really set any trends. But that could be some sort of understatement if we take a look at what the manufacturer prepares for us now. It may not be a trend, but it sure looks like Olympus wants to come up with something innovative here. Let’s see… Olympus has just come up with a 360-degree camera and lens. Does that mean HDR imagery is going to become mainstream any time soon?

Well, not necessarily. According to Olympus, this new camera will be perfect for surveillance mavens. It turn out that the new 360-degree camera works like the Google Maps Street View Dodeca 2360 camera, shooting in all directions. However, the Olympus model uses only one lens instead of an array of 11. Unfortunately, the new lens isn’t capable of shooting in a 360 degrees vertical plane like Google’s camera, but it easily manages a 180-degree vertical view.

DVice informs that Olympus did not care to mention anything about availability and pricing for this camera/lens combo. Anyhow, Olympus shouldn’t restrict availability only for the surveillance hardware market. Just imagine how video conferencing would benefit from such a device. Placing this camera in the middle of a conference room table and coupling it with Super Hi-Vision devices and some software that would enable an accurate directional microphone, this setup could pinpoint who’s talking and frame up a perfect shot of each participant at the appropriate time with no mechanical panning necessary. Sure, the camera/lens combo could get a bit expensive, but then again, plane ticket prices get ridiculously high in the summer.