I'm putting these three small cameras to the test. The Insta360 Go 2 has been getting quite a bit of
buzz, the hat-clip-magnets-stick-it-anywhere camera. The GoPro Hero10, the world's best
known mounted everywhere camera and the dji action 2. is it as innovative as dji claims
or the influencers right that it just isn't worth the extra price hi i'm adriel and i'm on a mission
to capture the everyday beauty around me and hope to inspire others to do the same i like to create
visual stories from the adventures and experiences that i go on and like to find a small camera with
an ultra wide field of view that i can use to to capture those unique and immersive shots simple
and convenient but also up to the challenge of the less than ideal lighting when hiking in oregon's
deep forest will one of these cameras make its way into my gear bag i hope so and i'm going to take
you on the journey to make that decision let's get started with the insta360 go to of these three
cameras only the go 2 provides automatic horizon leveling at the widest field of view the picture
is bright and poppy though the fisheye lens does bring some barrel distortion and stretching at the
edges noise in the shadows can be distracting and the glare infringing are heavy here
my shots felt like they are coming from a premium backup camera and that's not what i was expecting
let's talk about mounting the insta360 go to now first off the included clips the
the hat clip and the sticky mount clip pretty thin plastic i think it's fair to
say that if you drop these and step on them they're gonna break but there is an included
quarter inch thread at the bottom of the case so if you have the insta360 go
in its case you can attach the case to say a monopod a tripod or my small rig clamp here
now the problem with that is because of the shape of the case i found these threads only go in about
a half turn maybe three quarter turn at the most it can be a little bit of a trick to get
them on there as well personally i wouldn't feel secure having it threaded in just that little
bit and hanging that off of a selfie stick over say rough terrain a long drop or water
since we don't have a screen we're going to need the app to compose our shot
and the camera connects relatively quickly
there are both manual controls and ev settings for automatic exposure
shutter and iso priority are supported and there's a histogram
i did find the preview soft and oddly the app doesn't support pivoting to a landscape
mode that 16x9 preview is awfully small when viewed across the short width of the phone
back at home base the process to export recordings was a bigger pain point than i
expected the combination of the wi-fi connection and the reliance on the phone's processor for
stabilization makes for a much slower workflow this also burns down batteries quickly both on
the camera and the phone this might be a great camera for capturing those interesting fun moments
especially when the sun's out but how is that different than the camera that's
on our phones it's already in our pockets but that ultra wide always level horizon
now that's a trick and that is what had me take a look at this camera
so that magic level horizon was not enough for me to keep the insta360 go to
and if the influencers are right that the dji action 2 is not worth the difference in
price well there's a growing possibility i won't be keeping any of these three cameras
while waiting for the gopro to arrive i took the dji action 2
on a quick outing at our local park and was pleasantly surprised by the results
do
the light this evening was fantastic these are conditions where many cameras will shine
yet a few things immediately stood out both the front and back screens can fully control
the camera but the app itself is phenomenal an excellent preview is displayed in landscape mode
camera data is clearly shown including shutter and iso manual modes are simple to dial in
the lens is incredibly wide with very little distortion a fantastic picture working with
the magnetic mounting system of the dji action 2 is pretty cool the included quarter inch tripod
adapter is built really tough just add this to the bottom of any tripod or my small rig here
and once i feel everything is secure and ready
then i just need to put the camera click that on top neat as the light faded to twilight
i was still able to capture static shots that on the iphone were pretty rough
i returned in the morning to this beautiful frosty scene and yes that is a white fogbo
the overexposures are rolling off nicely the flares controlled well
this is a really good ultra wide view
the dji action 2 has a horizon study mode that comes with significant crop factor
and it's probably useful for vlogging but how do we get those ultra wide shots level
well it's going to record in full 4k resolution in the 4x3 aspect ratio and what that means is in
post-production we have a lot of leeway as we re-crop that to our 16x9 frame
all that extra vertical space means we don't need to crop in significantly when we go to correct an
off-level horizon so we just eyeball in the field bring it in and fix that up in fact that's what
we've already done in many of the shots that you've seen already speaking of post-production
access to the microsd card for transform files very simple or connect a usbc cable
to make this into a card reader for your ipad or pc as for the recordings i am able to season
to taste without the image falling apart add some gamma some shadow lift sharpness
this is doing great for 8-bit video but the gopro has arrived and i'm excited to have a look
the gopro hero 10 black a 10th generation standard by which all other action cameras
are measured sure it's larger than our other contenders but the reviews seem to agree that this
is still king of the hill well not so fast i was expecting this to be the most refined of the three
cameras that i'm looking at and honestly i was a little disappointed perhaps i had too high of
expectations so let's walk through some of my top friction points the gopro mounts may be excellent
for high action situations but to move this camera from mount to mount gets pretty tedious
i'm either messing with the thumb screws which take quite a few turns to seat or i'm screwing
the entire gopro onto a mount point and that's awkward the larger touchscreen is nice though
nearly half my taps tended to close a menu rather than change the setting that got frustrating quick
somehow dji was able to create a smoother experience on a screen less than half the size
the focal length is around 30 percent narrower than the dji action 2. and when we widen the view
beyond standard lens mode the barrel distortion really shows through it's actually difficult to
compare the quality between these two cameras because that field of view is so different
the gopro app is useful for previewing the shot but it lacks any exposure control
that needs to be done at the back of the camera and here's the head scratcher when recording
starts the preview goes black i found that these limitations made it difficult to compose
a shot with this camera now keep in mind that the front screen is a preview and status screen only
to make any exposure adjustments i have to do that on the back screen of the camera and if i were
going to be mounting this in a place where i don't have access to that back screen i need to dial in
those exposure settings before doing the mounting and the app isn't helpful at all here in this area
for those manual exposure changes it's a little bit fiddly i have to dive through a couple menus
and the iso you have to set both a minimum iso and a matching maximum iso
to fix that in so on the automatic exposure side there isn't a concept of a shutter priority
and that's pretty important for dialing in those battery smooth shutter speeds
i really could go on i've cut this list significantly to help smooth this video out
but these are really surprising limitations of a 10th generation camera hey so the gopro has
some rough edges but how does it compare with the action 2 in a deep dark forest hike well let's go
so
when attached to the dji action 2 the microphone array on the front touchscreen module
captures an immersive sound field have a listen as we approach the waterfall
in this setting the dji action 2 rises head and shoulders above the gopro hero 10.
it's not even a close race and that surprised me
the slightly larger sensor seems to make a significant difference
for the action 2 shots i'm able to lift the shadows add some sharpness
a little bit of vibrance whereas the gopro shots have an over-processed look already baked in
so the dji action 2 is ideal choice for my goals and has earned a place in my gear bag
between the nearly distortion free ultra wide field of view the capabilities in less than
ideal lighting conditions and the app they've combined to make a pretty great auxiliary camera
i'm impressed the cinematic style footage that this little cube can put out
it's expensive yes but the build quality and the capabilities really come through before we leave
off i'm going to answer a few questions that i know i had about the action 2 before i began to
test it is the front screen combo kit worth the price difference i would say yes for a couple
of reasons first is sound the extra microphones that are on the lower unit with the screen are
excellent quite the difference from the single mono mic on the camera unit itself and if you're
a vlogger i could see that front screen being very useful to frame your shot but outside of
those two reasons the app is so good that i find myself not really needing to use that front screen
one note though is that the front screen combo kit does come with the magnetic ball
head attachment which i think is a must-have accessory so if you factor out the price of that
the cost difference between the two is not as severe as it looks on paper is it
a problem that the lower unit isn't waterproof i would say no let's say i'm in a boat or in a
damp forest i'm not going to have a problem using the lower unit but if i'm in a condition where we
might get splashed or maybe hiking behind a waterfall i'd go ahead and take that unit
off and tuck it away into a dry bag until it's we're safe again this can be completely immersed
now there's some neat engineering going on with the way that these two units work whenever the
lower unit is attached the upper unit when it's powered on is pulling power from that lower
unit so it's not using its own internal battery it's also charging the upper unit if there has
been any battery usage as soon as you snap that bottom unit off it's using this internal battery
snap it back on again it's using the lower unit battery also the audio is immediately
available those extra microphones are immediately available in the menus of the upper unit as soon
as that bottom unit is attached it's a pretty neat piece of engineering so is there anything
i wish was different about the dji action 2 sure there's always room for improvement one
thing i wish they had was a virtual horizon line on the screen so i could level this
out easily both on the screens on the camera it would be ideal also to have that on the app
also i'd like to be able to lock in the automatic exposure and you can actually do this on the gopro
where you tap the screen and hold and it will lock that automatic exposure just like you're used
to on an iphone and then you can dial in the ev compensation from there now the manual controls on
here are so good that it's not this isn't a hard one but it would be nice to be able to do that
and i do have some concerns about the battery life as this charges it gets pretty warm and
that typically indicates some stress on the batteries i'd like to know more about the
battery replacement program so after a couple years of use how expensive will be to kind of
refresh this and keep its life going so why didn't i test the insta360 1r one inch that
larger sensor certainly wouldn't be ideal in those lower lighting conditions like we saw here
i do feel like i got a sense of what the workflow might be like by testing the insta360 go 2
and what the larger form factor would be like by testing the gopro hero 10.
i feel like in my kit the compromise between quality and convenience is better served with the
dji action too that was a long review and you stayed this far if you found it useful
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