[Asahiflex]

But how often do we want to take 360 degree panoramas? It also requires a good technique as it usually would be very hard to exclude yourself from the resulting picture.

I do understand there could be a market for it though. A niche market of a niche market, that is

[Vylen]

Grab an IR remote and hide behind a rock... all good :P

[westmill]

Heyyyyy my K5 can do a 360 even with a standard lens ! Easy peazy..... Stick it on video mode an twirl it round on a tripod.... Bingo lol

[mee]

But how often do (we) I want to take 360 degree panoramas?

Fixed that for you.

[karma13612]

Somehow they made the production one even uglier than the concept in that situation. Sometimes it works, sometimes you get an Aztek.

until it became the car "Mr White" drives in Breaking Bad.

Now when I see one, all I can think of is, well, Breaking Bad.

That is one heck of a show. Love it.

Now, if Pentax could position themselves in a show about a world class photojournalist, then we have exactly what we need.

Brand placement is critical and so useful.

[asw66]

• Mount it on a remote controlled helicopter with a remote (bluetooth?) release
• Enclose it in an underwater housing and take it diving

There's at least two intriguing possibilities. I'm sure that others will think of plenty more.

To the nay sayers in this thread: if you want cameras just like everyone else's I can recommend some other brands....

[ENicolas]

But how often do we want to take 360 degree panoramas? It also requires a good technique as it usually would be very hard to exclude yourself from the resulting picture.

I do understand there could be a market for it though. A niche market of a niche market, that is

It's a very popular style of photography right now - just about all large events have them taken, and every sporting event does.

You keep yourself out of the image by standing under the camera.

[meeverett]

But how often do we want to take 360 degree panoramas? It also requires a good technique as it usually would be very hard to exclude yourself from the resulting picture.

In my previous life, I did GIS (Geographic Information Systems) work. The place I worked had a lot of offices and other buildings that they leased out, but they were always trying to find a manageable way to have someone get panos of all the interior spaces so they could georeference them and keep track of things like wall colors, carpet, etc. Something like this would have seen almost daily use.

[Smeggypants]

Lot of conservative luddites in this thread.

Will I buy this 360 cam? Nope, very unlikely, but I think it's an excellent concept. It's products like these that give a company some personality. Just focussing on whether something makes a profit or not is soooo coul less and boring. And for those who are hung up on the usury enslaved economy think of this product as a loss leader. It's quirky and will attract people to the Pentax name.

Think of the bigger picture instead of whining that Pentax haven't yet released the Full Frame camera you likely won't buy anyway.

[Buschmaster]

Pentax used to make a number of products that were not for the consumer market and they made a great deal of money doing so. I don't know what this thing is for, but I can see it being used for security. If it ends up a money maker, then that's a good thing.

You mean we're not supposed to al be upset because we personally don't want this?

Like this:
I DON'T WANT A FF PENTAX SO IT IS STUPID THAT THEY PUT THEIR MONEY TOWARDS IT!

[SteveM]

I wish they would hurry up and release FF so we can stop complaining..........and start complaining about it.....

[wax]

For easy laughter people, Google street shooting will love it.
They just have to work on compressing the image efficiently.

[littledrawe]

I had always assumed that one was born out of a bet between designers to see just how ugly a vehicle had to be before not a single person liked it.

There was someone at my place of employment for about a year that drove one, even took the liberty of personalizing it with some decals and metal cutouts. I always wanted to find out who it belonged to but then surprisingly something more important came up.

[Ishpuini]

I was at Photokina on Sunday and had a look at this device. It was a lot smaller than I had expected from the images I had seen on-line. There was a touch screen monitor on the wall next to it, showing a picture taken with it. Not bad at all!!

Next to it, the only Japanese in sight was standing. When he briefly introduced what we were looking at his eyes shone with pride. Obviously he had been involved in the project. I couldn't get it over my heart to launch a critical comment questioning the spending of Pentax's R&D budget on "his" project... Esp, since it was an amazing looking object. Actually I even felt a bit sorry for the fact that his presentation was pushed away at the back of the stand and did not get a more visible place. It could have drawn more attention, and attention is what your want on a show like Photokina.

On a sidenote, I had a discussion in a similar vein with a friend when we were visiting the Hasselblad stand, i.e. their pimping the Sony NEX-7. We question the sense of this, and ended up agreeing that, whatever the sales potential of the Lunar, it was the first time we had seen the Hasselblad Photokina stand this crowded and with such a diverse audience as well. If they intend to diversify their user base, at least they already got the exposure with a more diverse public.

Wim

[Kunzite]

Ishpuini: my feeling exactly.
I understood that was a Ricoh project, and that it might not be the final form. Anyway, it was an amazing looking thing, and it does have it's uses...

I found a similarly "eyes shining with pride" look at the Epson stand, where another Japanese gentleman was showing me their new EVF. I hate those, but the one demonstrated wasn't half bad (an OM-D was provided as a reference, and it's EVF was noticeable worse).

However, I doubt the crowd at the Hassie stand would do anything but look. I passed through there several times, because I couldn't believe how ugly those things were