Ultrawide Zoom in a Compact Camera

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.

Comments

Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap...

[Spy der Mann]

how about 3-D cameras?

Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap...

[pair-a-noyd]

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.

Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap...

[LionKimbro]

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.

Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap...

[plover]

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.

Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap...

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Now that dual lenses seem to get cheap...

[LionKimbro]

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..!

Interesting...

[Dzimas]

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.

Re:Interesting...

[MSBob]

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.

Re:Interesting...

[Kadin2048]

You know, as cynical as that is, you're quite right.

Kodak isn't the only company that's doing this either; there are a lot of "entry level" digitals that are basically aiming for the group of people who are moving up (or over, one might say) from disposable film cameras. There are a ton of these people around. They honestly don't care about quality in the same way that even the most novice photography student does: if the image is recognizable, and doesn't have hideously obvious defects like big dust specks (and maybe not even then), they don't care. They've been buying, using, and throwing away plastic-lensed disposables that are nothing but some 400 or 800 speed film with a shutter and a strobe light -- probably not much better than a box with a hole in it -- for years, and they're happy with the results.

What they really want from a digital camera has nothing to do with quality, it's immediate gratification and the ability to share pictures. Why do you think that Kodak's digitals have HUGE displays on the back? Because that's what a lot of people care about: they want to take a picture and then be able to show it off to their friends. For some, they may not even really look at the photo once they take it off of the camera; it's something taken in that moment, for use the moment later. The next thing people want is to be able to share (via email) pictures, and perhaps print a few off here and there, so those are the next easiest functions to do.

The quality of the image -- once you get above a certain point, which I think is about 1024x768 pixels -- doesn't matter to a lot of people. The reason people buy multi-megapixel cameras (aside from the fact that they "want the best" without knowing why, which is probably the dominant reason) is so they can zoom in on things in the frame later. Megapixels are like megahertz were a few years ago: people have this dim understanding that they should be buying more, but no idea why. However they do it anyway.

Kodak's cheap digitals are perfectly designed for a certain kind of person. They let you take an image, show it off to people on the big built-in screen, shove it into a dock and email or save or print it. For 90% of the people who buy them, that's all they ever have to do. If you want more from a camera, don't buy one of the entry level models!

There was a time when the fact that a camera was digital implied that it was somewhat high-end. That era is over, and you can't blame Kodak's engineers (whether they were in-house or outsourced) for designing a camera that matches its target market.

I think that what will eventually spell the end of the true entry-level digital cameras is when cellphone digitals become easier to use. Right now they're too complex for most people. I know quite a few people who have cellphones with cameras, but don't use them because they don't want to figure out how. There isn't (on most phones I've seen anyway) just one button that you can press to take a picture. On mine, it takes four (Camera->Capture->Store->In Camera), and that's three too many. And getting the pictures off requires having Bluetooth working and manually selecting the files -- no iPhoto/Picasa integration. Once the phone manufacturers make it easy enough for a braindead person to use (and this includes the sharing end, not just the picture-taking end), I think the demand for cheap dedicated still cameras will decrease sharply.

What?

[shobadobs]

It would be nice if this advertisement included a price. And why no coupon?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the F--king Advertisement

This is the Internet. You're allowed to say "fuck" here.

Opera incompatibility.

[Poromenos1]

Slashdot is broken. I am using Opera and the ad is bleeding in the article.

Oh, wait...

Wow

[Capt'n Hector]

Cool design. Looks like a tribute to the twin-lense reflex era. Check out this Kodak TLR camera from 1957:

Kodak57b.jpg

For the rest of us get Autostitch

[hotspotbloc]

Autostitch is a free (as in beer) app that will stitch together multiple photos with no human intervention. Pretty nice stuff.

Autostitch home page:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca.nyud.net:8090/~mbrown/autosti tch/autostitch.html

Download via Coral cache:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca.nyud.net:8090/~mbrown/autosti tch/autostitch.zip

Autostitched photos on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/autostitch/

BTW, it's a MS Windows app but works great under wine.

Why new D-SLR announcements

[yorkpaddy]

Why doesn't slashdot post announcements on D-SLRs. The D200, D50, and Canon 5D have come out in the past year and not a single annoncement. I want to hear what slashdot users have to say about these cameras, not cutesy point and shoot cameras. Once you use a digital SLR you will never want to use a point and shoot again. There is no delay between pressing the button and the shutter firing. The manual control is nice as is changing lenses, but the zero delay is the best part of these cameras.

Image Stabilization is a MUST

[MBCook]

At this point, I think you are nuts to buy any camera (except perhaps a DSLR) that does not include Image Stabilization technology. My camera (a Canon Powershot S2 IS) has it and it makes a WORLD of difference in low light and when zoomed in. It help in normal situations too. Sony just released one of their ultra-tiny cameras with it (the first folded lens camera to have it, the DSC-T9), and many other cameras on the market have it.

My mother has a digital camera and she is constantly dissapointed by it. It is a nice camera, but like all digitials it seems to need more light to get a decent picture than a film camera with ISO 400 in it (boot the ISO to that on the camera, it still needs more light and the noise is horrendus). Having IS would be a HUGE help for that reason, and others (light camera + slightly shakey hands = blurry pictures). About the only time she gets good pictures out of it is in full sun (she could other times too with some learning and trial and error, but I don't blame her for not wanting to spend the time).

If the camera doesn't have Image Stabilization, skip it. Go to a store and try a camera with it on and off. The difference is amazing. You can see more about it if you read a review of the S2 IS or other cameras that have it.

no need for Windows or Wine

[r00t]

panotools is plain old C, and hugin is a GUI for it.

• hugin
• panotools

Re:nicely designed casing too

[MSBob]

Rather like something that was very cool circa 1986. This looks like the designer was hibernated for 20 years and they just thawed him to design this camera.

NOT an "Ultrawide Zoom"

[Colgate2003]

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!

You've got two sensors: use them both!

[Colgate2003]

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!

not so

[penguin-collective]

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.

People who know something about photography know that it is about making compromises; they often have multiple cameras and pick the best one for each job.

The V570 looks like an interesting camera; if image quality is at least decent, it will probably be quite popular, since you can't get a 23mm (equiv) lens in any package 5x the size and weight. Whether it has RAW, manual focus, or manual white balance doesn't matter.

used to use an SLR, quit...

[YesIAmAScript]

I have friends with D1x, 20D, 300D, 350D, D100 and D70s. I've used most of those. dSLRs are nice. The noise levels are amazingly low.

But I stopped using SLRs. Why? Too large. The best shot isn't always the one with the lowest noise level, with the longest zoom or even the best composure. But it is always a SHOT YOU GOT. And I just found that an SLR was too large, I couldn't carry it often enough. I was getting great shots when I got shots, but I was missing tons of shots because I had to leave the SLR behind and I didn't get those shots at all.

As to delay when pressing the button, you need to investigate recent P&S cameras. Recent P&S cameras have shutter lags similar to dSLRs, and actually, there's no reason they can't do better than dSLRs. Because a dSLR has to raise the mirror before it can start the exposure, and a P&S doesn't. That's additional lag right there.

Sony has been making P&S cameras with up-to-date chips and thus virtually no lag for over a year now. They've rolled their entire line to use such chips a while back and some are on the 2nd generation of these chips. Canon, on the other hand still sells crap like the G5 which use old chips that are slow to start up, slow to take shots, slow to display shots.

Go to dpreview and read the reviews of recent good cameras like the Sony DSC-V3 or the Canon SD### (like 550) series. Shutter lag in P&S cameras is way down. And if the market demands it, it'll go even lower.

Oh, and Sony has near-full manual control on all their cameras and full manual control (minus setting manual white balance in degrees K) on the higher-end (typically larger) models. Again, the DSC-V3 is a great example. And most of the other manufacturers also have full manual controls on their high-end P&S cameras.