Spherical imaging cameras enable interactive 360° tour of Brazil

Brazilian company panoGrama—which specializes inpanoramic video production—recently launched Brazil 360°, an interactive video experience that utilizes spherical imaging cameras to provide 360° panoramic views of all over Brazil.

For Brazil 360°, company founder Rodrigo Cerqueira filmed more than 30 hours of video from 27 different locations around the country. To do so, he used variousLadybug spherical imaging camera models from Point Grey. Ladybug2, 3, and 5 models were used, depending on the resolution Cerqueira required.

Ladybug2 cameras feature six 1/3" 0.8 MPixel Sony ICX204CCD image sensors, which have a pixel size of 4.65 µm x 4.65 µm and achieve a frame rate of 15 fps. Ladybug3 cameras feature six 1/1.8” 2 MPixel Sony 274 CCD image sensors, which have a pixel size of 4.4 µm x 4.4 µm and achieve a frame rate of 6.5 fps. Lastly, Ladybug5 cameras feature six 2/3” 5 MPixel sensors which have a pixel size of 3.45 µm x 3.45 µm and achieve a frame rate of 10 fps.

The Ladybug2 and Ladybug3 models have an 800Mb/sec 1394b interface with locking connector, while the Ladybug5 has aUSB 3.0 interface.

These cameras were used in tandem with LadybugCapProsoftware running on a 64-bit Windows 7 PC to generate the panoramic videos of Brazil. In addition, at some points Cerqueira used a 40-m UniBrain Smart Cable in order to capture video from 20 meters below sea level.

"The main reason to use the Ladybug camera family is because it works like a 'digital camera,' but with six lenses," Cerqueira said in thePoint Grey case study. "So we just need to worry about one video source instead of many."

Check outBrazil 360°.

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