Win Camera Gear Worth £3300 with 360Precision

Enter the 360Precision prize draw  for your chance to win over £3300 worth of camera gear and software. Open to everyone, this prize bundle is ideal for those wishing to try their hand at panoramic photography.

The competition closes on October 23rd 2014 with the winner announced on October 27th.

For panoramic photographers, this is one of the most comprehensive, light weight, panoramic photography kit bundles available. It includes camera gear, software, professional panorama hosting and support. But even if you are not a panoramic photographer there is always eBay, so it is still worth entering for the resale value. The megapixel Sony A7 camera has an RRP of £1300, the lens about £270, the tripod about £450 and the 360Precision Carbone pano head about £435.

360Precision Draw

360Precision Prize Items:

The lucky winner will receive all the following:

• The awesome 24 megapixel Sony A7 Full Frame digital camera
• Samyang 8mm Fisheye F2.8 Lens
• Light weight 360Precision Carbone pano head
• Manfrotto 755CX3 Carbon Fiber Tripod
• PTGui Pro License – for Mac or PC
• Pano2VR Pro – for Mac or PC
• KRPano panoramic publishing solution
• Geopress360 WP theme
• 12 months Wordpress hosting from WPEngine

Whether or not you win this competition, if you create your own panoramas then try out Panoramic Earth for free virtual tour hosting options and embeddable content.

Ricoh Displays Single Shot 360 Spherical Panorama Camera

Ricoh have been working on a very small, portable device that takes a spherical 360 panorama in one shot and sends it automatically to a smartphone or tablet. It uses two 180-dgree lenses, combining the image internally before sending the result for viewing.



At this point there was no information about image size and resolution. Currently it only takes stills, but the company is considering trying to also capture video. At this point there. As the Ricoh demonstrator explains: 

 "It has two fish-eye lenses, each of which covers 180 degrees. The camera combines the two pictures, and sends them via Wi-Fi to a tablet or smartphone for viewing. The idea is, the pictures you take arrive automatically. When viewing it like a regular panoramic image, you can also see up and down. When you pull out from the image, it finally becomes a circle, and you can also look at it as a sphere." 

"This camera represents a step beyond SLRs and compact cameras. The project began with the idea that, if taking spherical panoramic photos was easy, the results might be fun. Currently, the camera takes still photos. But we'd like to enable it to handle video, too. We're still just presenting this technology, so the specs haven't been decided yet. Right now, we're at the stage of seeing how people react. If people think this camera is fun, we'd like to commercialize it, and make it a bit smaller. We want to keep developing it, so we can offer a version for consumers." 

 "This is a project we're discussing with staff at art colleges. We think this technology could also be presented as a "panorama ball," where the pictures are stuck onto a sphere."