Snapping a panoramic shot these days is as simple as procuring your standard digital and point camera.  Course, you’ll need a semi-steady hand, patience and a willingness (should be tolerance) to use the camera maker’s included software.  Alternatively, you could just toss this Ball camera.  It can captures a full spherical panorama of where ever and whatever you throw it at.

Inside the foam padded 3D-printed enclosure, are 36 fixed-focus 2 megapixel mobile phone camera modules. An embedded accelerometer calculates when the Ball Camera will reach it’s peak – based on its initial acceleration and deacceleration – and in turn activates the cameras shutters simultaneously.  The result?  An image that looks not only left to right as far as the eye can see, but up and down without ghosting or blurring.  Dumping the image is a simple as connecting the Ball Camera to your computer’s USB port.  Even though they don’t make mention of any proprietary software, it’s gotta be a must in order to stitch the images together to complete an interactive image that can be viewed from any angle the user points the mouse.

Check out the video for additional shots.  You’ll see that the Camera Ball is just a bit smaller than a soccer ball.

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