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Panasonic is really into 3D. Not only will it sell you a big 3D television with which to watch the latest Hollywood head-spinners, it will soon sell you a lens which can be popped onto a G-series camera and shoot your own stereoscopic pics.
The lens is actually two lenses in a single, compact housing. When you shoot an photo or video, two pictures are captured simultaneously onto your sensor. Obviously this reduces the overall resolution of the resulting images, but with video this shouldn’t matter as the footage is down-sampled from the giant photo-sensor. This double-image (or video) is then turned into a 3D one in software, to be viewed on one of Panny’s TVs.
The lens has not yet been given a launch date or a price (other than a vague “end of the year”), so plenty of questions remain unanswered. Will cameras need a firmware update to use the lens? That seems almost certain. Also, how good will the stereoscopic effect be with the two lenses so close together? And I’m assuming here that the cameras will actually shoot 3D video: the press release only mentions still images, but who wants to view their photos on a TV screen?
Still, we love that Panasonic is making 3D an optional extra for its Micro Four Thirds system. It’s this kind of innovation that is currently leaving the likes of Nikon and Canon behind, and we’re all for it. And it shouldn’t be long before somebody hacks their way around the 3D format and lets us do something useful with the images instead of looking at them on a TV.
Panasonic developing world’s first interchangable 3D lens for Micro Four Thirds (Press release) [DP Review]
See Also:

Firmware Update Adds 3D Panoramas to Sony NEX Cameras
Stereo Lens-in-a-Cap for 3D Digital Photography
Panasonic Details Micro Four Thirds Camcorder
Micro Four Thirds

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Fuente: Gadget Lab