The "ball cam": getting a bird's eye view

Would you throw your camera in the air to take pictures?

Well, now you can with the "Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera" - a ball made to be tossed into the air where it shoots full spherical panoramas and enthralling wide angle images. German designer Jonaz Pfeill, a recent graduate of Berlin’s Technical University, has come up with a simple and fun way to create full 360° spherical panoramic photos. His idea was to mount 36 2-megapixel image sensor modules - the kind you find in some smartphones – into a specially designed, foam-padded green ball. When the ball reaches its peak height, each module takes a snapshot at the same time, like a single camera fitted with many lenses all pointing different ways and distributed to take an “all-round” panoramic view.

The panorama can then be downloaded to a computer. The camera is still in the prototype stage, and as yet there is no release date. But it is sure to be bouncing into a store near you before long!

More information
http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera