Abstract: A spherical panoramic image camera system including four receptacles equally angularly spaced about a geometric center and four cameras, each camera comprises a lens having a lens field of view of more than about 180 degrees and an optical axis, each camera is configured to be mountable to one of the four receptacles with the field of view pointed away from the geometric center and an image recorder having a substantially rectangular shape having a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension, wherein the vertical dimension is adapted to receive an image cast by the lens that corresponds to the lens field of view and the horizontal dimension is adapted to receive an image cast by the lens that corresponds to a field of view of more than about 90 degrees. The optical axes of the four cameras are equally angularly spaced about the geometric center.