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70 Megapixel Webcam
Alien54 writes "Small swiss company RoundShot has released an interesting new item, the 360 internet Livecam. The Livecam is a digital 360 camera, capable of 70 megapixels. The Swiss company claims the Roundshot Livecam uses a high-resolution digicam designed for pro photography, as well as slit-scan technology, which apparently allows for 'seamless panoramas' of up to 360 degrees. The cam is also capable of a high zoom factor, zooming up to 20x. Apparently, the cam has 'far-reaching" applications, most importantly in tourism, weather stations, corporate websites, airports, sports clubs, construction sites and private residences.'"
They seem to be big into panoramas. Check out their gallery
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Is this really 70 megapixels? The press release is short on details, but I'm guessing their "slit scan" technology is simply a traditional line-scan camera mounting on a revolving shaft. In this case the camera would use a CCD that is a single line of pixels, instead of an array like conventional cameras. Line-scan cameras have been used in industry when high resolution is important (the chief tradeoff is speed, since scanning a full image requires moving the camera or the object).
Livecams are so low res that they are no good except for determining weather conditions.
I like this website alot. High resolution. Can't find anywhere else on web like it. Check out topless,thong chicks. With a 8000x2320 panorama.
best beach photo webcam on the planet.
Like checking the weather here.
hermosa beach livecam
yahoo livecam directory
I believe the point of slashdot is to have user-submitted stories and comments rather than just the ones by the AP or Reuters. I happen to enjoy it.
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Ground Control to Major Tom...
Well, it could go up to 360^2, though you would be hard pressed to keep the camera out of that picture. You could also venture out into t, leading to 360 T shots. You could also mount it on a movable platform of some sort, and get X, Y, and Z values, though for comparatively limited values of X Y and Z. And for that matter the spectrum values could be modulated more than it already is, leading to a potential Lambda range, as well as temperature, audio, and alpha beta gamma radiation detection.
Thus, the panoramic camera could be 360^2TXYZLTmpVArBrGr.
It probably wouldn't have fit in a press release, though.
The ______ Agenda
Yeah, I know, it would take days for one image to come down, but man.. Compared to the seemingly crappy 0.000005 Megapixel cams they put on those things now.. Could you imagine how awesome those images would be? It would be worth sending a probe there with one of these mounted on it for nothing more than taking a 70MP panaramic shot. Seriously.
Check out this paper for images.
I do not moderate.
- Hugin is getting really good as a frontend for panotools. It'll be really great when alpha layers become available too!
- Getting the camera to take remote piccies is possible as well (although getting access to all the manual parameters maybe a problem -- no luck there with my canon a40)
- A stepper motor and its RS-232 interface is not that expensive or hard to find anymore (50 quid at Milford instruments).
- Or... you can build your own out of a floppy drive connected to the parallel port. Maybe a better solution, the milford stuff is getting pretty hot after a while and requires 9-15V
The question remains: How do you attact the stepper shaft to the camera? (I mean other than duct tape or lego)It would be nice to have a 90degree bent bracket as well to take piccies vertically.
Has anybody built a tripod like this? What did you guys use?
bundaegi is good for you
Why call it a webcam and not a camera - the only thing that makes a webcam a webcam is the crappy resolution, to accomodate the bad bandwidth that goes along with the "web" part.
~Berj
Buy one of the latest prosumer camera's like the Coolpix 8700
then attach a Panoramic Optic from 0-360.com
and you have and 8-Megapixel panoramic solution for about $1500.
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
If it takes that long to shoot an entire cylinder, what prevents stuff from appearing twice in the picture, if it's quick enough? I mean, you could stand in front of the camera until it's got enough of you in the picture, and then run to the opposite spot so it scans you again, or some weird maneuver like that.
Just imagine a single, puny UFO blazing at random through the sky. When the Pentagon gets ahold of the picture, they'll think a horde of aliens are gonna invade us.
Checked whether someone would mention the RIT camera. Yes, it didn't go unnoticed.
About 4 years ago I have made similar ones based on a Umax page scanner. Quite easy and a lot of fun. My son then 12 used it for some time. The IR sensitivity is another thing that can be exploited. With the internals of the Epson 3200 you could make one that exceeds 70 MB considerably. An anamorphotic lens would help however. There are view camera scanning backs that can make panoramas too. The principle is of course as old as the Circut cameras. Another nice film based type is the French Voyageur that will deliver more than 70 MP on a high end filmscanner.
Ernst
The software for the camera is open source! Wee!
If it takes that long to shoot an entire cylinder, what prevents stuff from appearing twice in the picture, if it's quick enough? I mean, you could stand in front of the camera until it's got enough of you in the picture, and then run to the opposite spot so it scans you again, or some weird maneuver like that.
Nothing stops stuff appearing twice. It's that simple - the camera starts rotating and adds each slice to the current picture. You can then do all sorts of weird pictures in crowds or any scenario where there is a lot of movement.
I do wonder whether the CCD is 70 Mpixels or just the final image (and I haven't read the specs). I suspect the latter, as all you need is a CCD with, say, 4000 sensors mounted in an vertical array and the moving slit/lens combo allows you to read out the array every 7.5ms or so giving you 16000 horizontal pixels for the two minute scan. That's closer to the way existing film-based 360' panorama cameras work - just expose a long strip of film progressively as the camera rotates.
Still extremely cool.
For those of you who want to muck around with panoramic photos and you don't own a 360' camera like this, you should take a look at the various panorama tools available. I particularly like Hugin although I also use autopano-sift to do some of the setup.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.