Importance

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Abstract

A camera arrangement (100) comprises first and second sets of one or more cameras (102, 104, 202, 204, 204') and a half-silvered mirror (130). The one or more cameras of the first set look through the half-silvered mirror--i.e., receive light that passes through the half-silvered mirror. The one or more cameras of the second set look off the half-silvered mirror (130)--i.e., receive light reflected off the half-silvered mirror. The cameras of the first and second sets are positioned so that individual fields of view (103, 105, 203, 205, 205') of the cameras of the first and second sets alternate to form a wide angle aggregate field of view (110, 210). The field of view of each individual camera merges contiguously along a boundary with the field of view of a camera from the other set. This permits cameras which form adjacent sections of the wide angle field of view to be located at physically separate locations in space yet have individual fields of view which appear to originate at the same physical location in space. An additional mirror (160, 160') may be associated with each camera of the second set to provide a second reflection of the light received by the cameras of the second set to avoid image reversal. There are no mirror edges within the aggregate wide angle field of view. Thus, there are no artifacts in the high resolution image produced by the camera arrangement at the boundaries of the sub-images produced by the individual cameras.

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First Claim