Have you ever tried to take a panoramic photo using your smartphone? Just take a few snaps of your surroundings and you can Photoshop them together easily at home, right?
If you've actually tried this, the end product likely looked like rubbish even though it took you about three days to get the angles right. No matter how still you think you're holding the phone, or even with a standard tripod, each picture you take is at a slightly different angle, and correcting this on photo editing software can be more trouble than it's worth. Mixology is taking the headache out of panoramic shots with its new smartphone accessory, Panoramic Pod.
The pod is a low-tech spring loaded wind-up device that clamps on to the end of a smartphone that doesn't even require batteries. The pocket-sized pod simply revolves a smartphone around a single axis keeping the device steady, which should produce panoramic images with a minimum amount of distortion.
To take panoramic photos, you place pod on a flat service, clamp in your smartphone, start your camera, wind up and release. The phone then rotates at an even angle for 25 seconds, which should be ample time for any decent smartphone camera to take multiple photos.
There's still be a little work to be done to combine your shots into one at home later, but you won't have to spend hours rotating images one milimeter at a time until they match up.
The device, measuring 11-by-2 inches, is available online via Mixology or on Amazon for $28. Already on the market is the similar Veho Muvi X-lapse device shown in the video below. It's actually designed to screw into regular still or video camera but comes with a special clamp for smartphones. It costs just $20 but doesn't come with a tripod.
If you want something fancier, for $60 you can get a the GoPano 360, a special lens that attaches to the iPhone allowing you to capture 360 degree video.
