iPhone VR Gear for 360º Video
Kogeto DOT
Upgrading our iPhones from the 4S to the 6 Plus meant we had a few older iPhones laying around. As their 5MP cameras were far from being obsolete, we began experimenting to see what we could do with them. As it turns out, quite a bit!
When paired with an olloclip or Pixeet fisheye lens, the iPhone 4S was good enough for shooting immersive 360ºVR images. We posted the results from those experiments last week.
Encouraged by the results, we began looking around for other iPhone 4S camera accessories and came upon the Kogeto Dot (80% discounted on Amazon as the lens was purposed built for the iPhone 4/4S).
Our collection of iPhone 4S lenses… from the left: Kogeto Dot, Olloclip 3-in-1, Pixeet Fisheye.
The Dot is the brainchild of Jeff Glasse. The basic idea is to put a reflective half-dome on top of the camera’s lens to reflect a 360º view of the scene. The image will be warped, but as the parameters of the distortion is known, the proper perspective of scene can recovered with some clever image processing.
This is a 360º image as captured by the iPhone before any deconvolution processing to “straighten” it out…pretty grainy.
The ability to capture a 360º view in one shot eliminates the need for stitching together a scene from multiple images. The tradeoff is in image resolution…and the penalty with the Dot is pretty severe.
This is a close-up of the Kogeto 360º lens. The reflective surface/dome is on top. The light has to pass through the plastic housing, bounce off the silver dome, through another clear piece of something, THEN into the camera…
However, the Dot does have ONE thing going for it. With its one-shot ability to capture a 360º scene, it meant we can use the DOT to shoot 360º VIDEOS!
Does it work and how well? We’ll let you know 🙂
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