70 Megapixel Webcam 117
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.'"
You can now see... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You can now see... (Score:1)
Re:You can now see... (Score:1)
Wow... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Funny)
Panoramas (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Panoramas (Score:5, Funny)
LiveCam Sample Images Here (Score:2)
Just a couple in zip files, each under 4 meg. But still interesting.
Re:LiveCam Sample Images Here (Score:1)
They must not realize that jpg is a compressed format. They didn't gain much by zipping them, of course.
Pretty pics. I had the idea a while ago to make a full panorama digital camera. Actually, I imagined a sphere that would take a full-view pic with only a blind spot where the electronics enter the sphere. You could then view the resulting pics with a helmet/goggles/whatever and look around and it would be like you are there. Oh well, maybe some day.
Re:Panoramas (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.panoramas.dk/ [panoramas.dk]
Re:Panoramas (Score:2)
As noted, the details on this are sketchy, but I HIGHLY doubt it's a 70 megapixel camera - just a rotater/stitcher on top of a run-of-the-mill digicam platform. What they probably make easy for you is keeping the exposure exact, the shooting location the same, and stitching it all togather for you.
You too can do this (wit
Re:Panoramas (Score:1)
The price and the data rate (Score:5, Informative)
Just in case you're wondering if you can afford this camera: According to a PDF called "Press release 11-6-2004 (42 kB)" in the article (no direct links permitted), the price is 9600 Swiss francs (CHF). This converts [xe.com] to 7,642.71 USD.
More confusing: "Presentation to the press 11-6-2004 (1,059 kB)" indicates that shooting a full cylinder takes 20 to 120 seconds. However, the data output rate is only 1 MBps, and it can shoot only 5 high-resolution (4.5 MB) images per day or 80 low-resolution (100 KB) images per day. Who can make sense out of these conflicting rates?
Re:The price and the data rate (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps though, part of the 20x zoom relies on the super high resolution CCD capturing a high rez image, and zooming in on it (digital zoom, so its called).
I haven't read much on it though, but from what I can tell in your post, well, I'm confused too
Re:The price and the data rate (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Appearing twice and making panoramas more cheaply (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Bah, 360 degrees is nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
Using the same exact camera, I bet I could make a panaroma up to 361 degrees, 720 degrees, hell, unlimited degrees!
Re:Bah, 360 degrees is nothing... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bah, 70 megapixels is nothing... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bah, 360 degrees is nothing... (Score:2)
the idea was, to have a panorama shot that showed the same room occupied and not occupied as it spun.. the software took the images, ran for about 4 hours (Usually 30 minutes) and rebooted my computer oh well, it's still something I'd like to try, the mobius panorama..
Line scan (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Line scan (Score:1)
Re:Line scan (Score:1, Interesting)
Line scan -- flad bed division (Score:2)
"the cam has 'far-reaching" applications" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"the cam has 'far-reaching" applications" (Score:1)
Pricing (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like I won't be getting one right away
So thats what thats for. (Score:5, Funny)
Deluxe setup includes (Score:5, Funny)
I can see the whole site starting to grind to a crawl even as I type this. Sopmeplace in europe, an MIS manager's beeper is going off, on a friday night no less.
What could possible go wrong on a friday night?
Re:Deluxe setup includes (Score:2)
It was already time for the sun for rise for Saturday Morning over there by the time this story was posted. It's presently Late Friday Night in the USA, but not in Europe.
Re:Deluxe setup includes (Score:3, Funny)
This makes it worse.
I can imagine some geek being up to some wee hour of the morning, maybe working friday night until dawn. or having fun at the corporate friday night lan party. Then, just as the head hits the pillow ...... BEEP BEEP BEEP
Insert hangover as appropriate.
Re:Deluxe setup includes (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats all? (Score:2, Funny)
they make it sound like it could possibly go larger.
Re:Thats all? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus, the panoramic camera could be 360^2TXYZLTmpVArBrGr.
It probably wouldn't have fit in a press release, though.
Would be nice if more livecams could upgrade (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [video-monitoring.com].
Like checking the weather here.
hermosa beach livecam [hermosawave.net]
yahoo livecam directory [yahoo.com]
Re:Would be nice if more livecams could upgrade (Score:2)
I have a two monitor setup at home. The way it's configured I use webcam picture (high-res) as my desktop background, have it re-fetched every 5 minutes and, consequently, the desktop updated.
I guess itt's just a really geeky alternative to looking out the window but I like it. :)
The mods will hate this one (Score:5, Funny)
I believe you're referring to pornography
Beyond Megapixels? (Score:1)
Re:Beyond Megapixels? (Score:1, Insightful)
"far-reaching" applications (Score:1)
So isn't the megapixels rating a farse? (Score:5, Informative)
But it's NOT really a 70 megapixel camera it can't take all those 70 megapixels at one time.
That would be like producing a digital camera that would shift it's lens really really fast in the 4 diagonal directions to piece together an image that was 4 times the original size.
I think they are going for marketing points on this one. What is honestly stoping a camera company from putting out a camera that actually shoots at 5MP but they double the image size and interpolate the subpixels and say it's a 10MP camera?
When I grab stuffs off the internet at 72dpi and I need to enlarge it, I use the same technique. I just think the whole MP thing is becoming just like the MHZ craze that started when AMD tossed the Athlon on the market.
"Yay! I've got a 1 billion megapixel digital camera!" - User after learning how to resize photos in Photoshop CS
Re:So isn't the megapixels rating a farse? (Score:3, Informative)
Shutters on cameras are made of two curtains - the first one is normally closed, the second one normally open. When you depress the shutter release, the first curtain opens to start the exposure, and the second curtain closes to end the exposure. At fast shutter speeds (1/125 on my manual pentax, 1/200 on my Canon D30) the second curtain starts to close before the first curtain has finished op
Well.... Ya. (Score:5, Informative)
For cameras, it's megapixels. Like everything, there are foundations in truth. A large problem with CCD devices, at least initally, was resolution. 35mm film is equivalant to at least 4000x4000 pixles (16 megapixels) if done well. CCd devices were struggling at less than a million. Worse, CCDs are luma sensitive only (black and white), so you have to do a colour mask on them, reducing the effective resolution you get out of them.
So for a while, pizels were a good measure of the quality you'd get. You could hook great optics to a system, didn't matter, the picture would still suck because the resolution was so slow.
Well, this is all not the case with CCDs any more. It's not at all expensive to build multi-megapixel CCDs, and some companies (Canon) are even using different technology to better capture light. Now it's all about the optics. Any professional photographer or cinematographer will tell you that the lense is critical, for analogue or digital, and you often spend more on it than the camera.
Problem it, it's not easy to attach a number to lenses to determine how good they are. Different ones are good at different things and there isn't an objective rating anyhow. Also, good optics re expensive. You just aren't going to build a stellar lense for $50. Pixel count is cheap, and thus easy to sell. Also good optics are pretty much mutually exclusive with small size, which is in demand.
As you noted, very similar to mhz. Used to be, mhz was a good emasure of PC performance. For one, Intel was the only real game in town, but also there wasn't as much variance in architectures. Plus memory was fast enough to fully support the processor's needs (no multipliers), there were no GPUs, DOS was single user/single task, and so on. More or less, other then waiting for things to load from disk, your bottleneck was the CPU. So if you doubled the mhz, you really did double performance.
Well of course that's just not the case today. However, it's already stuck as the measure. People know mhz, and it's simple. So to many, it is the definitive performance guide.
Unfortunately, not a lot you can do about it. Pepople will take the wasy way out and fail to excersize due dilligence and marketers WILL take advantage of this.
Re:So isn't the megapixels rating a farse? (Score:1, Insightful)
I think TRUST does this. They sell a 3MP camera, and then mention in small letters: 2MP sensor. See for example:
http://www.pbase.com/cameras/trust/powercam_750 but
http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPC-Trust_PowerCam_75 0 _L CD_Zoom#fulldesc mentions that it's a 2Mp camera....
Fuji also used to do this. They would have a sensor with
the coolpix 4300 is 4.0 "effective" MP (Score:2)
(of course, regardless of the size of the image, it's a phenomenal camera that i'd recommend without reserve for anything short of full pro work...you really can't go wrong with nikon hardware)
Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:2)
Re:Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you still don't think so, why don't you try to make a single-CCD camera that can take a 360 degree panorama then? Or even easier, take a 8 megapixel CCD from a prosumer camera, harden it for the extremes of space and mars, and make it suitable for precise scientific measurements. Good luck!
Re:Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:2)
er, 5 pixel?
I believe the rovers are using 1.1 megapixel cameras. They are wide-spectrum radiation-hardened cameras with 9 interchangeable filters that were dropped and bounced around on the martian surface some ten times before use. Add the fact that they were spec'd out and sourced 3 years ago, before the "low cost" digicam revolution, and the fact that the rovers can only uplink at 10KBps for part of a day, which kind of limits the size of pictures they can take.
Anyway, the rovers ar
Re:Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:2)
Re:Why aren't these on the Mars rovers? (Score:2)
FYI: all the cameras on board the rovers have 1024x1024 pixels, so i think you could call that exactly one megapixel. Even better, they put 10 of those on each rover: 2 front and 2 back looking fisheyes, 1 microscope, one descend imager, 2 medium resolution navigation cams and two high resolution panorama cams. Using the last one, they stich together something like 50 to 100 images together to get a full panorama. Chec
Stitching programs do the same thing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stitching programs do the same thing (Score:1)
Re:Stitching programs do the same thing (Score:1)
Considering exposure, you may have to take manual control over this instead of letting the camera choose for every image.
Re:Stitching programs do the same thing (Score:3, Informative)
1) Use manual exposure and find an okay medium ground; it is tricky when you are shooting a room with a big window or something that makes things go way out of whack. You can also take one overexposed and one underexposed image in the case of something like window and then composite them together with Photoshop.
2) Not a problem. Panorama software is designed for exactly this. You can actually buy ridiculously fisheye lenses to do panoramas in just a few shots. You feed it all your
Must need coffee before reading slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Must need coffee before reading slashdot (Score:1)
VERY interesting... (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like they have THEIR market picked out already!
Couple this with superresolution techniques... (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out this paper [ox.ac.uk] for images.
ufo watching? (Score:2, Funny)
Technical Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the lens goes, It may be possible that they are not even using one, by using the "pin-hole" technique, but I am not sure this would produce good optics.
If we used the same description of megapixels for scanners, most scanners would be capable of a few tens of megapixels.
-Bill
Re:Technical Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
I had something like this on my desk twenty years ago. It was the first commercial high-resolution scanning camera, made by Datacopy. Several thousand pixel line scanner, mirror driven by a stepping motor, a really good lens, and a big copy stand. B/W, no greyscale.
Re:Technical Explanation (Score:1)
Nothing to see here folks, if you want to shell out $7k for a camera, get a nice dSLR.
Re:Technical Explanation (Score:1)
Plans please. I wish to build my own. On a side note, I've been drooling at some film cameras that kind of do basicly(not all do 360's) the same thing for some time now. Such as the Globuscope [everent.com] , the Widelux [cambridgeworld.com] and the Russian [binocularsmart.com] Horizon [pauck.de], AND of course the Seitz Roundshot [roundshot.ch].
Of course some has m
How do you link the stepper shaft to the camera? (Score:4, Interesting)
- Hugin [sourceforge.net] is getting really good as a frontend for panotools [unimelb.edu.au]. 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 [milinst.com]).
- Or... you can build your own [ic.ac.uk] 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?
webcam? cam? (Score:5, Interesting)
~Berj
Because it's stationary (Score:2, Informative)
yahoo! (Score:3, Funny)
now the yahoo chat rooms can provide high resolute "boobies"!!!
far reaching?
all thumbs (Score:5, Funny)
Prosumer cams + hardware device are better value (Score:3, Interesting)
then attach a Panoramic Optic [0-360.com] from 0-360.com [0-360.com]
and you have and 8-Megapixel panoramic solution for about $1500.
Megapixels (Score:1, Funny)
It amazes me how expensive these things are (Score:5, Informative)
Other people have made cameras like this for far less at home. You can make a basic one for $50 in parts. All you need is a single line (or 3 colour line) scanner element as found in most scanners, a camera to put it in with a big lens, and a stepper motor to spin it instead of rolling it along the scanner bed.
You can even spin it by hand if you have something measuring how you turn it to expose each scanline right.
Check out this guy [rit.edu] who built one on the cheap.
My favourite application was the guy who took pictures of the moon using a single line scanner. He put the scanner into the eyepiece of a fixed telescope. Then, he had the earth rotate, thus passing the scanner over the surface of the moon to record an image.
The reason he could only do the moon is the scanner elements from hand scanners are not that light sensative. They expect a bright light to light up the object.
Of course, 70 megapixels is nothing. I have been doing giant stitched panoramas much bigger than that for a long time though I don't put them that size on the web.
However the first image of burning man on this page [templetons.com] is 210 megapixels. You need to see it printed out, which you can if you come to Burning Man.
Re:It amazes me how expensive these things are (Score:1, Interesting)
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
Re:It amazes me how expensive these things are (Score:1)
Scanning the moon by having the Earth turn
is a really cool idea. I found the guy at:
http://www.k3pgp.org/astropix.htm
The image is very good.
most importantly in tourism, weather stations, cor (Score:2, Funny)
so, basically, everything?
Slit scan technology? (Score:2)
Re:Slit scan technology? (Score:1)
Cant tell if you are being sarcastic...
A year ago, I saw a couple of adult sites that used a cheaper 360 cam. They were using a cam from another vendor located in Santa Clara as I recall.
It was sitting on a coffee table in order to cover the on-going activities of a party being held in the room. You could control the direction with your browser.
Any cam with remote control capabilities? (Score:1, Insightful)
if someone walked in front while it was scanning (Score:1)
Overlooked feature.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Viking I and II (Score:3, Insightful)
The advantage to a system like this is that number of pixels in the axis scanned by the slit can be increased by finer control over the stepping motors driving it. While at some point you end overscanning scene (each strip covers much of the same ground as the previous strip due to the angle of view of the imaging element) you do gain some information by that overscanning - so you do increase the resolution in that axis.
Now, a camera like this is USELESS for motion photography (so all the one-handed typists drooling over pr0n are S.O.L.) - in fact the Viking camera team created a picture of themselves while they were testing the camera on Earth - one guy got in the shot five times by waiting until he had been scanned, then running around behind the camera, getting into position again, and being scanned again.
HOWEVER, I'd love to have a camera like this for taking pictures of places like The Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, the view from Pike's Peak, and other scenic vistas - there is simply no way to capture these places with anything like a normal camera.
Imagine if a camera like this could be located at the summit of Mt. Everest!
Or better still, Mare Tranquillitatis [si.edu]
Re:Viking I and II (Score:2)
The View from Everest [nasa.gov]
70 Million Megapixels? (Score:1)
Re:Slashdot Alternatives? (Score:1, Interesting)