A brand-new product launch geared at the metaverse…

Legacy camera company Canon just announced a new product launch. It’s a camera lens designed to capture video and images for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) content.

It’s odd-looking. We can see the two fisheye lenses on the front of an EOS R5 camera. They allow the camera to capture a 190-degree field of view. And the image quality will be better than that of a standard VR camera.  The lens isn’t cheap. 

Canon plans to launch it at a $2,000 price point – and that doesn’t include the $3,900 cost of the camera itself. The company is also pairing this with a subscription for a software package including Adobe Premiere Pro. The software will allow users to work with the video and images captured by the camera.  

Here’s why this is so interesting… We are now rapidly racing into the age of the metaverse. Some of these metaverses will be built entirely with computer graphics. Others will incorporate augmentations in our real world.  Those augmentations will need to be captured and produced, and that’s exactly what this camera is designed to do. This is a product designed for creators and producers interested in making content and bringing experiences into a virtual environment.  

We’re hitting an inflection point in the industry.We have been rapidly building out all the tech infrastructure to support metaverses. That infrastructure consists of the protocols, platforms, computing power, and storage capacity necessary to support these new worlds.  Now we need to start programming them with content. 

That’s what will bring these metaverses to life. That’s what this camera is all about.