Panono's throwable 360-degree camera is for enthusiasts only

When it was unveiled in 2011, the Panono, a toss-able sphere of cameras, was seen as a harbinger of the consumer 360-degree content revolution.

A successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo a few years later pushed it closer to reality and finally into people's hands this year.

But the 360-degree landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years. The rise of virtual reality headsets has helped create an explosion of interest in 360-degree photography and videos.

Consumer 360-degree cameras like Ricoh's Theta S and the 360fly have helped put the technology in consumer hands and Samsung and LG will soon release their own Gear 360 and 360 Cam, respectively, to really bring 360-degree content to the masses.

Is there even any room for an expensive $1,500 ball-shaped camera that only takes photos and not videos?

Photos only, no video

Lofty price aside, the Panono is a different kind of 360-degree camera.

It starts with its appearance. The grapefruit-sized camera is covered with 36 cameras — each a 3-megapixel camera — which all fire off simultaneously at the same time when the shutter button is activated. Software then stitches all 36 images into a single 108-megapixel photo, which is then viewable in 360-degrees either on your smartphone or on the web.

Image: tyler essary/mashable

As I said earlier, the Panono doesn't shoot video — not even at low framerates.

When I asked Jonas Pfeil, the inventor of the Panono, and co-founder and president of the company of the same name, why the camera doesn't shoot video, he told me he wanted to focus specifically on still photography.

I have no doubt including video recording would have been a technical challenge, especially with all the stitching the software would need to do. Not to mention it would have increased the cost of the camera.

The Panono comes with 16GB of internal storage (there's no memory card slot for adding more). The company claims the battery is good for taking up to 200 shots. On average, I managed around 125-150 photos on a single charge before the battery died; this was with me turning the camera on/off to conserve power throughout a day of shooting.

Shooting spherical photos

Image: Tyler Essary/Mashable

OK, so still photos only, it is. I've tried a handful of 360-degree cameras and even a few smartphone apps (like Google's Cardboard Camera) that can be used to take 360-degree photos and the results have always been mostly mediocre.

The photos from most consumer 360-degree cameras have low resolution. LG's 360 Cam, for example, takes 16-megapixel spherical images. For 360-degree content to really shine, they need to be really, really high-resolution — so sharp you can't see any blurriness and you think you're actually looking at reality (or as close to reality as possible).

With 108-megapixels of resolution to work with, the Panono, is supposed to embarrass any cheaper 360-degree cameras.

After trying out the Panono, I can't say it really does. Image quality is so-so. Panono photos are higher resolution and sharper than its cheaper competitors, but the end result can be a hit or a miss. Sometimes photos looked great and sometimes they looked disgusting. Sometimes the you can't really make out the stitching between each image and sometimes it's so visible, it's terrifying (like a geometric Picasso painting).

There are a few ways to take 360 pics with the Panono:

Hold it in your hand and press the shutter button or use the app as a remote

Attach it on a tripod and use the app as a remote

Attach it on Panono's selfie stick rod and use the included shutter button on the handle

Throw it in the air and it'll take a photo at its highest point

After some trial and error, I learned the best way is to place it on a tripod or use a selfie stick. Taking photos with these two methods gave me the sharpest spherical photos (most of the time). I also learned the Panono isn't very good at stitching faces that are placed inches away from the camera. You end up with a lot of distorted faces.

Here are three spherical photos taken with my hand, selfie stick and tossing method:

Holding the Panono up means my hand is always blocking the cameras on the bottom half of the Panono. The downside to using the tripod and selfie stick is that you'll need to buy a special Panono tripod adapter ($35) or the selfie stick ($45). On top of the $1,500 for the camera, that's not something I would be willing to pay for.

The Panono's charm is, of course, the ability to throw it in the air. When you toss it up, sensors inside detect when it has reached its peak and then automatically takes a picture.

It sounds great on paper, and a whole of fun, but it's actually not for a couple of reasons:

The Panono isn't drop proof, so if you don't catch it and it hits the ground, it'll likely break and then you'll be out $1,500

You have to throw it straight up, any shake or spin prevent will either prevent a photo from being taken (the LED on top will flash red and make an error sound)

The pics always come out sideways and look worse than ones taken with the selfie stick on tripod

For what it's worth, you can fix the sideways 360-degree photos by re-aligning the horizon when you log into your Panono account on a computer. There's no automatic re-align feature, so you'll have to fiddle with a couple of sliders to get correct the image. Kind of a pain in the butt, but it's better than not being able to fix them at all.

Here are some of my favorite ones Panono 360-degree pics:

And here's what a poorly stitched 360-degree pic looks like:

You can find all the photos I've made public on my Panono profile here.

Sharing and viewing

I haven't even talked about how 360-degree photos are rendered.

After you've taken a bunch of 360-degree photos, you need to use the Panono phone app to process them. Right now, the app is iOS only (it's in beta for Android).

The Panono app.

Rendering 360-degree photos involves connecting the Panono to the app over Wi-Fi, downloading the unstitched RAW files, uploading them into the cloud and then waiting for them to process (stitch and render).

Downloading and uploading pics takes only a few seconds, but waiting for your 108-megapixel 360-degree photos to process can taken anywhere between 13-20 minutes if you have a fast internet connection.

Once they're done processing (however long it'll take for you), then you can view them either on your phone or online. Additionally, you can share them to Twitter and Facebook, but you'll only be able to view as a 360-degree video in the latter. Sharing a photo to Twitter just shares the link out to your online profile.

Wait for for version 2.0

The Panono is certainly a different kind of camera, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it just yet. It's expensive and doesn't shoot video. The coolest feature — the throw-in-the-air-to-take-photo — also needs some more tuning. Oh, and the camera needs to be made drop-proof. Seriously.

All of these things are surely coming in version 2.0 along with a lower price. The Panono is a fun camera for the 360-degree enthusiast, but everyone else should wait until it does more and gets cheaper.

Panono The Good

Higher-resolution than cheaper 360-degree cameras • 360-degree photos are shareable on Facebook

The Bad

Expensive • Selfie stick and tripod adapter cost extra • Processing time is long • Throwing method isn't the best • Not drop-proof

The Bottom Line

The Panono is a fun camera for early adopters, but it's too pricey and the photos are too hit-or-miss for anyone else.

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Source: Panono's throwable 360-degree camera is for enthusiasts only