Cameraman and lens builder Dan Burton and mirror maker Thomas Seidl have developed a new lens containing a small mirror that gives just about any camera a 360-degree view that the viewer can manipulate once the video has been downloaded to a PC, Mac or tablet.
Seidl has been obsessed with making curved mirrors the last 15 years of his life, mainly for the commercial video sector. Combing his expertise with Burton’s lens making knowledge, the new EyeMirror 360 condenses all the advantages of a large mirror shape into a smaller, more affordable one that the average consumer can use.
“We’ve not gone down the cheap, plastic route which will produce low quality,” he says in a KickStarter promotional video.
While the mirror lens works on just about any kind of camera, what really blew their mind was when he saw the specs for the new GoPro Black digital camera, an “amazingly powerful little beast that’s got this unbelievable ability to shoot at four times the resolution of standard HD, we’ve gone into the camera and flipped the hood and changed the camera’s firmware . . . so you get a smooth 24 frames per second and the equivalent of HD resolution” when shooting through the mirror.
“I can’t wait to see where people mount it and what other interactive video people can produce,” according to Seidl.
“It’s amazing,” says Francisco Goya, 2000 Windsurfing World Champion and founder of Goya Windsurfing. “You can really feel like you are there, because that’s really how it goes. . . . Your eyes are not just looking in front like a camera but your eyes are also perceiving what’s going on around you.”
Steph Bridge, 2007 Kitesurfing World Champion, says:
“Some of the views that you get for our sport of kitesurfing are really, really unique — views that I’d never seen before.”
Burton and Seidl are raising money via KickStarter to manufacture the lens. As of Sunday Dec. 8, the KickStarter project had 48 backers who collectively pledged £11, 831 with 26 days to go before the project’s January 4, 2014 deadline to raise £14,000.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/80441908 w=700]
