panoramaXL - Panorama eXtraLarge: Overview Digital Panoramic Cameras

Overview and guide to panoramic cameras and panoramic systems. I will add to this list during my research on cameras. This page cant serve any recommendation or review the cameras as I dont have access to these cameras.

I wont review the panorama feature that comes with a lot of point-and-shoot cameras.

Last update: 2015-01-09

We look at 2 types here, genuine digital panorama cameras and panorama support systems that help to create professional panoramas with DSLR cameras.

Remark: This list does not claim to be complete or accurate, I am not affiliated with any of the products or brands. The brands and products and images belong their respective owner. The images below show website snapshots and serve as guidance, there is no IP infringement intended.

Digital Panorama Cameras

These cameras create straight away either panoramic or equirectangular images either in the camera or more often in attached portable devices or some kind of online service.

Here we can observe 2 quite extreme directions of camera development, high-level and expensive professional cameras on the one end and affordable solutions born from crowdfunding projects. To complete the types experimental cameras are added at the end.

Highend Panorama Cameras Scanner

This cameras are targeting professionals in photography and marketing who eg. need to produce highres images or CGI ready images or even in other domains, like forensic. All cameras are well beyond 15k Euro, I doubt even the famous panorama photographers are using one of those. They work on the same principle, line scanner, where the cameras continuously scans individual vertical lines while the camera is rotating into a composite image. The companies below are in the panorama domain for many years.

Spherocam
website

Panoscan
website

Seitz

website

The swiss company creates panorama cameras since the 1950's. Very impressive technology.
I cant afford the digital 617 or the D3 but I own a 120 film roundshot.

Highend Panorama Cameras Multi Camera

Camera using multiple cameras mounted into one body instead of scanning.

nctech iSTAR
website

Crowdfunded Cameras

All of these cameras use the approach to take images from more than lens simultanously and rener them outside the device.
None of the below cameras have yet been released (September 2014) to the supporters or buyers, but except the last one all were successfully crowdfunded.

Bublcam
website

360Cam by Giroptic
website
3 cameras in a small casing can shoot both video and images. It comes with geotagging, wifi, HDR and other fancy features, though at a lower resolution than the Panono Ball below.I backed this project with 300 U$ on Kickstarter. The final price is 499U$, shipment supposed to start towards end of 2014 according.

Panono Cameraball
website
Am impressive equirectangular 360x180 108 megapixel image created from 36 fix focus cameras mouted into a ball shaped casing. You can throw it upwards and the images will be shot a the zenith of 'flight' or use it handheld or with a tripod.
I am very keen to get my hands on this camera, it comes at ~550 Euro. Planned release early 2015.

CentrCam
website
The cameras was not successfully funded end of May 2014. They might return through a different channel.

Other Cameras

Ricoh Theta
website
This camera is a multi camera setup reduced to 2 lenses as a handheld device. Mobile concept at a lower image quality, interesting niche product.
Update: In October 2014 Ricoh launched a new Release Theta M15.

Experimental Cameras

The line scanning concept is nothing new, nor is it specific to panorama photography. While the above professional cameras are way outside most peoples wallet, some guys tried to rebuild slit scan cameras based on the hardware found in 50$ flatbed scanners. Some (old) links here, though I believe the approach to shoot panorama with multiple cameras outsmarts this linescanning thing.