Sony Full-Circle 360° Lens Mechanism

Sony 360° lens

The folks at I4U News have posted an item about a new Sony 360° full-circle lens video camera. They quote the November edition of Sony's CX-News Semiconductor and LCD Newsletter which says,

    "Until now, taking a 360° panorama with a normal lens has required taking multiple shots while rotating the camera slowly and then combining ("stitching") those shots together to form the panorama. In contrast, the 360° full-circle lens allows the full 360° surroundings of the camera to be imaged at the same time with a single lens. Sony has now developed a camera module that uses this 360° full-circle lens, and is releasing as commercial products both a camera module that uses a 380K-pixel, 30 fps CCD that outputs a ring-shaped image as a composite video signal as well as a high-resolution camera module that uses a 1.28 MP, 7.5 fps CCD with a built-in panorama expansion processing function. New functions and applications can be created by combining these devices with a variety of different products, and thus these products can contribute to the creation of new markets."
Just a reminder that this isn't exactly a "first," check out our Kaidan 360° One VR review for a similar device that's been available for digital cameras for a while now.