Taking panoramic photos was once a time-consuming process of carefully snapping a series of shots and then manually stitching them back together in Photoshop. Today, it’s as easy as just panning across a vista with your digital camera or smartphone, but researchers at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab have come up with an even easier solution: a flexible camera that captures panoramic images in a single snap.
The FlexCam prototype was actually developed by a team of interface researchers last year, but is finally being shown to the general public as a glimpse of what the future of photography could be like. A series of lenses and sensors attached to a thin flexible material automatically captures and stitches together a wider field of view as the FlexCam is bent in an arc. And a flexible OLED panel on the back means the camera’s display can bend right along with the rest of its body.
There are no plans to commercialise the technology, sadly, but hopefully it will inspire the camera makers of the world to tinker with more revolutionary designs that will help make photography easier and easier for novice enthusiasts. [Queen’s University Human Media Lab via Damn Geeky]
