OZO: Nokia’s Professional VR Camera Priced At $60,000

On Monday, at an event held in downtown Los Angeles, Ramzi Haidamus, President Nokia Technologies, presented OZO to the world. OZO is the first Virtual Reality camera system specifically designed for professional production.

“Nokia OZO is a category changer. It redefines entertainment and it redefines how people connect to each other and to the world around them” –Haidamus

OZO captures 360° spherical video and 360x360 surround sound with cutting-edge Live Virtual Reality Preview, and seamlessly integrates with existing video and audio compositing workflows. It has 8 image sensors and an equal number of microphones, and removes the need for stitching footage together, The Verge explains. The device has a record duration of 45 minutes per Media Module (500 GB, Solid State Media) with a capture frame rate of 30 fps. It comes with rechargeable Lithium Ion battery.

People need to shell out a whopping $60,000 to get their hands on the device. The company is taking pre-orders now and will ship the cameras in the first quarter of 2016.

“We’re going to make Ozo available for rent at rental houses, to make it accessible, and of course we need to start thinking about how can we make it more accessible to prosumers. A prosumer [version] would have to be a fraction of this cost, and that has to be something we start thinking about immediately from a product line perspective”, Haidamus told The Verge. “This is going to be the top of the pyramid in terms of quality. There’s going to be something where you might not need every single bell and whistle. Something you can just take as it is, stick it somewhere, press record, and it goes. And that’s something that we are thinking about.”