Photokina 2016: Z-Cam new all-in-one VR solutions – a serious rival to GoPro’s Omni? By Sarah Redohl

The Z-Cam S1 comes with four SD card slots, as well as four HDMI ports and an ethernet port for file transfer.

It’s going to be a busy fall for ImagineVision and its Z-Cam series of VR cameras. The Z-Cam S1 VR camera is set to ship in December, and the company is already working on a model that combines the best of the S1 with key features from the existing Z-Cam E1 (launched in 2015).

The S1 is a fully integrated professional VR camera with four synchronized sensors and coordinated auto white balance and exposure. The camera can shoot 6K video at 30 fps and 4K video at 60 fps. Here’s an example:

The GoPro Omni uses six Hero4 cameras, but the Z-cams take a different approach using only four. To do this each camera has a high quality fisheye lens attached to give a broader field of view. The result is a compact unit that feels very solid.

Footage is recorded to the camera’s four SD cards, but the camera is also equipped with four HDMI ports for monitoring and an Ethernet port for fast image file transfer. Users can also manually control all camera settings on their computer via the Ethernet port, or can simply hit the record button on the camera to take advantage of the S1’s automatic settings.

For more information, check out the S1 on Indiegogo.