I've got something pretty amazing for you in this Monday morning! Do you remember the beloved Disney attractions filmed in Circle-Vision? Disneyland Paris fans surely remember with nostalgia the great Visionarium movie in which Jules Verne meet H.G Wells. Not to mention the great ones at Disneyland whether it was "America the Beautiful" or "America Journeys", now extinct attractions since a long time... But at Epcot World Showcase visitors can still enjoy two Circle-Vision movies: Reflections of China at the China pavilion and O Canada! at the Canada pavilion. I think that the new 2007 version of O Canada! - an update of the original film with 50% new footage - was probably the last Circle-Vision movie filmed by WDI Imagineers.
What you also probably know is that Circle-Vision movies needed a huge and heavy camera to film at 360 degrees. Above, you have a picture of it and below, the camera was fixed on a bobsleigh for the bobsleigh sequence of the Visionarium, known as "From time to Time" at WDW.
Now, the great news is that you won't need anymore a huge camera to film your own 360° movies as a company named CENTR has developed a 360° video camera which is so small and light that you can hold it in the palm of your hand!
It was designed by people who worked previously on the iPhone camera at Apple. And it works pretty easy: you film, the software stick together the four parts - as there is four lens all around it - and you can even edit your movie with Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro or iMovie! Include with the camera is a Tripod mount which is "reversible" and include a GoPro adapter which means that those of you who already have the GoPro accessories will be able to use them to fix the camera!
The CENTR Camera stitches videos together from four independent HD image sensors. CENTR footage can be viewed through your desktop, smartphone, or tablet in real-time via Wi-Fi through the CENTR interactive player. And you can create everything from "Circle-Vision" movies, amazing panoramic time lapses to the ultimate 360° selfie. As you can see on the picture below it is really unbelievably tiny.
Here is a screen capture of the specifications of this CENTR camera.
Now, guess what, there is ANOTHER 360° camera which is launched -actually it was even launched a few months before the CENTR camera - and it's the Geonaute 360 camera. It's a bit bigger than the one above but is looks very good too, and was the winner of "Best of Innovations" 2014 award, so you might want to have a look at it too, right HERE.
This one will cost you a bit more during the pre-order period - $399 - and you also have sample movies on the website HERE.
It's always amazing to see how the technology now offer things unthinkable just ten years ago. That's the good side of technology, i suppose... As to know which one is the best between the two 360° cameras above, both looks good and interesting so don't ask me to make a choice, though if i have to order one myself, i'll probably take the CENTR camera.
Pictures: copyright CENTR, Geonaute
I took a ride with Disneyland Railroad yesterday at DLP, and when its approaching Discoveryland, It plays the soundtrack of Le Visionarium in train... how it brought me back to to the golden age of Discoveryland.
ReplyDeleteReally, current Discoveryland is so souless without it. I wish they could combine the storyline back to the park, just with a new technology like Soarin'.