Ricoh's New Spin-Out Company Brings 360 Cameras Into Focus

Vecnos wants to make 360-degree content mainstream, starting with its compact, wand-like camera. 
360 camera shaped like a pen
The new 360 camera from Vecnos. The unnamed device will come out later this year.Photograph: Vecnos 

There's a new 360-degree camera in town, but it's not made by any company you've heard of. Vecnos is a new brand, spun out of the Japanese company Ricoh, which is known for its imaging products and printers as well as some of the best 360 cameras around.

Ricoh will continue to make 360 cameras—the spherical videos captured by these devices have proven popular among amateurs and professionals creating immersive content. However, Shu Ubukata, the brains behind 360 imaging products like the original Theta series, will be leaving Ricoh (along with his team) to lead Vecnos as CEO. Vecnos will operate as a subsidiary of Ricoh, which is also the new brand's largest investor.

"The majority of Ricoh's business is office equipment," Ubukata told WIRED (with Vecnos senior vice president Kiyoshi Hashimoto serving as a translator). "To make a new product, a new culture, they decided we should make a new company. We are part of Ricoh, but Ricoh decided we should be very independent like a startup company."

The camera's unique design features four lenses at the top—three facing outwards in a ring and one pointing straight up.

Photograph: Vecnos 

Vecnos' first product is a small 360-degree camera shaped like a wand. It looks kind of like the Neuralyzer from Men in Black. The company hasn't yet shared the name of the camera or its price, but we know a bit about its design. There are two buttons on the grip for controlling the camera. At the tip, there's a proprietary system that houses four lenses—three around the sides and one on the top.

These types of cameras can capture everything around you, so you don't need to point it in any specific direction. There's quite a bit of competition in the spherical space, from the likes of GoPro and Insta360, but Vecnos is touting the miniaturization of the components as one of its camera's standout features. To Vecnos' credit, the camera has about the same thickness as a magic marker, so it is much smaller than competing cameras. Expect the image resolution and battery life to be on par with existing cameras.

Ubukata said the company's overall goal is to introduce an easy-to-use camera that's also elegant, as opposed to the geeky-looking 360 cams available today. He wants to put the camera in the hands of Gen Z and millennial creators—people who regularly use visual apps like Instagram and TikTok—because he believes younger users still don't really know what can be done with 360-degree imaging technology.

The camera is about the size of a felt-tip marker, so it's small enough for most people to comfortably hold.

Photograph: Vecnos 

360-degree content has historically not been easy to work with. Unlike a video captured with a smartphones or regular camera, 360 footage needs to be tweaked a bit before it can be shared online. At the moment, Facebook is one of the few social media platforms where you can share 360-degree photos and videos, allowing anyone to pan and tilt the field of view to gaze at whatever detail in the scene mosts interests them. On other platforms that don't support 360 vids, the spherical clips need to be cropped and edited to just show one portion of the scene before they can be shared.

Ubukata teased the Vecnos app, saying it allows anyone to easily create short videos from 360 images that can be shared on apps like Instagram and TikTok. Ubukata also says artificial intelligence will be employed to help process the 360 footage, but unfortunately, that's all he could share at this time about the app's features. We expect to hear more closer to the summer before the camera officially becomes available.

Most 360 cameras today are made for niche audiences, including professional photographers and videographers, drone enthusiasts, and outdoorsy folks that can just strap one on their person and capture every angle possible. Whether Vecnos' first product can tap into this market or push 360-degree video further into the mainstream remains to be seen. From what we've seen and heard so far, aside from the compact design, it doesn't seem to significantly distinguish itself from the competition.

But Vecnos isn't going to be just about 360 cameras. Ubukata says the company plans to offer "new innovations" after the launch of this camera is complete.

Updated 3-09-20, 7:30 pm EST: This story has been updated to clarify that Shu Ubukata helped create the original Theta series of cameras, not the more recent Theta Z1.

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