Idealoeye has completely redesigned its C4 professional 4K 360 camera.
I first saw Idealoeye’s C4 at CES 2017. At that time, it looked like the Z Cam S1. According to the representatives, it had a resolution of 6K at 30fps, with live streaming at 4K.
Idealoeye has since totally revised the C4, making it much more compact. The new version of the C4 is only 12cm tall (4.7 inches), and weighs only 883 grams, and includes a standard tripod insert. It features four cameras with a wide f/2.0 aperture, paired with four Sony 1/1.8-inch sensors that are each around twice the size of typical mobile phone sensors. Video resolution, however, has been decreased to 4K. The C4 can be controlled with a smartphone app.
One of the new features of the C4 is a passive cooling design that reduces its temperature by as much as 25 Celsius (compared to the non-optimized design), and allows it to operate even in ambient temperatures as high as 35 to 40 degrees Celsius.
The new C4 has high quality realtime stitching, and can stitch 4K @ 30fps within 1 second. The website claims it uses optical flow stitching, which would be unusual (to my knowledge, all other realtime stitching cameras use template-based stitching). Its possible that it has two separate stitching modes. Idealoeye claims that their stitching will also balance the exposure and white balance to make it consistent throughout the frame.
Here is a sample video from the C4:
Here is what may be a sample live stream:
I dont know the price or availability yet. I expect they will be at CES 2018 and I will inquire about the C4 at that time. In the meantime, Idealoeye is still producing its flagship P21 camera with 21 lenses and 8K resolution. But it appears that they are no longer going to produce the C2 consumer camera with 4K resolution.
What do you think about the C4 so far? Are there any specific features you would want it to have?
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