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Ultrawide Zoom in a Compact Camera

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the melts-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hand dept.

manavendra writes to tell us that Image-Resource has an interesting writeup on the recently released Kodak EasyShare V570 digital camera. The V570 is a dual lens camera that incorporates an ultra-wide angle lens and an optical zoom lens. The camera will feature 5 megapixel resolution, 5x optical zoom, in-camera panorama stitching, video recording, a 2.5 inch LCD screen, in-camera distortion correction, and picture blur alert.

11 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 4, Interesting

    how about 3-D cameras?

    1. Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap... by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I was about to pop in and say just about the same thing and the very first thing I see is your post.

      When I was a kid in the 60's they had a huge collection of stereoscopic slides at our local library.

      I would go there everyday and spend hours and hours going back in time through
      that old wooden viewer and those old slides. Many of them were 1800's or near the turn of the century.

      To me, those old slides WERE time travel. Where are those slides now?
      I suspect that most of them went in dumpsters in the 70's..

      History, lost forever.

    2. Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap... by LionKimbro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      3-D photography does not require multiple lenses, if you can move the camera, and if the target is relatively stationary.

      So for example, if you were photographing a mountain scene, you can just wave your camera around. If you had 25 different shots, it's like having 25 different eyes to position and construct an image from.

      And the resulting calculated image can have a much greater resolution than the camera itself.

      So, you can end up with a 3D high-resolution textured model, simply from one camera input. Like, say, your cell phone.

      Now, granted, that's a lot of processing for a camera to perform... ...which is why wireless is so interesting. If you can send the pictures to google, and get google to work out the calculations, and send you the result, ...

      Look up Photogrammetry.

    3. Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap... by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My mom has quite a collection of them. She used to live in an old school that was converted to condominiums in the 1980s, and they had preserved a cabinet with several drawers of these slides. She contacted one of the local museums to see if they were interested, but they were not. As far as I know, she still has them.

      --
      John
    4. Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You would not need just the images, but also very accurate positioning data on where the photos were taken.

      In theory, perhaps you could extrapolate the positioning information by looking at static objects in the frame, shadows, etc., but I don't think that's anywhere near practical.

      However if you had a cellphone with augmented GPS (WAAS or something like it) that had submeter accuracy or better, and you were taking pictures of a large object, and maybe included a compass chip or something like it to give you an azimuth reading, then I think you could do what you're talking about. At the very least you'd be able to easily construct a photographic panorama / flyaround (a la Quicktime VR). The work necessary to produce a 3-D model might be, as a physicist I knew used to say, "really nontrivial." At least working just from the images and telemetry data without any other subjective stuff (like selecting out the areas by hand as those 2-d photogrammetry systems have you doing, it seems).

      But in general I think that's a very cool idea. It would be neat to see digital camera manufacturers start to embed GPS chips into cameras; at the very least it would be cool to open something in iPhoto and see a minimap of exactly where you took the photo. I know that there are some vacation photos of mine that I wish I knew exactly where I'd been standing when I took it, and there's no easy way to figure out now. It's not like the chips to do that would be bulky anymore, now that they've been miniaturized for cellphones. In fact I think I remember a fairly old Kodak DSLR (one of their really serious ones that were built on Nikon F1 frames) that had a serial port and might have been able to connect to a GPS, for that purpose. I think it's a feature that's ready for prime time.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    5. Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap... by LionKimbro · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You would not need just the images, but also very accurate positioning data on where the photos were taken.

      Quite right!

      In theory, perhaps you could extrapolate the positioning information by looking at static objects in the frame, shadows, etc., but I don't think that's anywhere near practical.

      No; It actually exists, now. It's not just a theory. I have a video on my hard drive here, demonstrating it ("kitchen.mp4.avi",) but I can't find it online. No matter; do a google search on "real-time camera tracking in unknown scenes" (which is the title I see when I start up the video,

      It's just as you say-- those little points are called "landmarks," and it uses them to track by.

      However if you had a cellphone with augmented GPS (WAAS or something like it) that had submeter accuracy or better, and you were taking pictures of a large object, and maybe included a compass chip or something like it to give you an azimuth reading, then I think you could do what you're talking about. At the very least you'd be able to easily construct a photographic panorama / flyaround (a la Quicktime VR). The work necessary to produce a 3-D model might be, as a physicist I knew used to say, "really nontrivial." At least working just from the images and telemetry data without any other subjective stuff (like selecting out the areas by hand as those 2-d photogrammetry systems have you doing, it seems).

      A blue bird in industry has told me that in the next 3-5 years, cell phones will have not only GPS, but $3 accelerometers capable of sub-meter resolution sustained for 1 hour without update. (Important for underground locations.)

      The work to produce 3-D models may be non-trivial, but: Did you follow the links I gave you? It's all been done- and this isn't recent: This is a few years back.

      Here's a very simple example, here's a more complicated one, and here's yet another, this time dated 2000. Be sure to check out the generated 3D models.

      So the techniques are out there, and they're in practice, and many people are starting to wake up that these are useful things to do. There's a lot of money to be made here. So, this is why I don't think it'll be long before this is integrated into cameras.

      We have 2D camera phone scanners. Why not 3-D? Some even do OCR.

      But in general I think that's a very cool idea. It would be neat to see digital camera manufacturers start to embed GPS chips into cameras; at the very least it would be cool to open something in iPhoto and see a minimap of exactly where you took the photo. I know that there are some vacation photos of mine that I wish I knew exactly where I'd been standing when I took it, and there's no easy way to figure out now. It's not like the chips to do that would be bulky anymore, now that they've been miniaturized for cellphones. In fact I think I remember a fairly old Kodak DSLR (one of their really serious ones that were built on Nikon F1 frames) that had a serial port and might have been able to connect to a GPS, for that purpose. I think it's a feature that's ready for prime time.

      The cell phones have cameras, and many phones already have GPS. It won't be long before they all do..!

  2. Interesting... by Dzimas · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Anyone else notice that this thing's design harkens back to the wooden boxed Kodak Brownie cameras that were introduced (along with 120 roll film) in about 1901? I wish Kodak much success with their digital innovations -- it's been a bloodbath (technologically and from a dollar & cents/employment perspective) at their company for the last couple of years.

    Personally, I'd like to see them create a hybrid analog/digital sensor that combines the best of the film and digital worlds. It would avoid the nasty blowouts that digicams are succeptible to, while adding the benefit of digital speed to the analog image capture process.

    1. Re:Interesting... by MSBob · · Score: 5, Interesting
      As an (unhappy) owner of DX6490 I can tell you exactly why Kodak is in trouble. It is a camera built for nobody. Some of its features belong in an entry level DSLR while it targets the know-nothings. However, it's quite a challenge to get a decent photo out of it in a point-and-shoot mode. On the other hand, nobody who knows anything about photography will not be willing to put up with the lack of manual focus, lack of RAW format or no manual white balance adjustment.

      Why did I buy their camera? Because I'm stupid. Knowing nothing about photography at the time I went to the local mum and pap photo place and asked for advice. They sold me a crap camera that happened to be expensive. I vow never again to rely on anyone else's word when making a significant purchase or buy a Kodak product.

      --
      Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
  3. Wow by Capt'n+Hector · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Cool design. Looks like a tribute to the twin-lense reflex era. Check out this Kodak TLR camera from 1957:

    Kodak57b.jpg

    --
    Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
    Africus aut Europaeus?
  4. NOT an "Ultrawide Zoom" by Colgate2003 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The headline is deceiving. This camera does not have an ultrawide zoom. It has a 37-117mm equivalent zoom lens in front of one 5MP sensor with a second, 23mm equivalent prime lens in front of another 5MP sensor. There is no way to take a picture with an equivalent focal length between 23mm and 37mm (a difference of 25 degrees in angle of view).

    So, this is really a fairly normal pocket camera with an "ultrawide mode" accomplished by adding an entire second imaging system to the device. That's pretty big news in itself, isn't it? Two 5MP sensors in your pocket!

  5. You've got two sensors: use them both! by Colgate2003 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd love to see a camera like this with the option to take a picture using both imaging systems at the same time. Imagine having a wide-angle "context" view for each picture you took while on vacation. A 117mm telephoto shot with an embedded wide angle view giving almost 5x the viewing angle to give context to the detail shot. This wouldn't be useful all of the time, but it would be interesting to have. You could always take the wide shot at a lower resolution when it wasn't the main view the photographer was interested in.

    A second option could take two 5MP photos and interpolate the two images together to provide an extremely high-resolution shot, corrected for any lens defects or flare. Take a 23mm shot with every longer shot and use the area of the 23mm shot that mirrors the longer shot to enhance the image quality. You would get more help at wider angles than at telephoto, but you would gain detail with any shot.

    This would be less useful, for the majority of snapshooters who end up having to crop way too much from their photos, 23mm shots could also include a slightly closer view from the other lens to eliminate some of the inevitable quality-degrading "digital zooming."

    With two sensors, you are ignoring one of them every time you take a picture. Use both!