- [Marques] This video is sponsored by Insta360.
So this tiny camera has basically one great trick
that makes it the most versatile camera that I've ever used.
So there's been action cameras
and 360 cameras for a while now.
I've tried some on and off for a few years.
But Insta360 asked to sponsor a look at their latest,
highest quality, most fully featured version yet.
This is the X3 and I'm really glad I did.
So here's how it works.
This camera body has two 1/2-inch,
high resolution sensors back-to-back.
So they're each recording a super wide-angle video
that stretches way back,
actually a little beyond 180 degrees.
And so since each camera goes a bit beyond 180,
there's a little overlap at the seams.
And then the camera does the work
to stitch the two feeds together into one.
And then even better,
since it knows where the mounting point is,
it knows where a selfie stick would be
and it can stitch that out of the video.
And then of course, it knows its own exact dimensions
so it can also stitch itself out of the shot.
So essentially it creates this invisible ball
of 360-degree video capturing goodness,
which is pretty sick.
But honestly, the how it works isn't nearly as interesting
as what it actually enables you to do.
So check this out. You pair it up to your phone, right?
You can see what the camera's pointed at, which is me.
And then when I start moving it, it stays pointed at me.
So they named this FlowState Stabilization.
Basically, it's using AI to find a horizon
and keep that level and locking on a target somewhere
in that sphere of video.
And now you're really getting an idea
of the power of this camera.
This isn't something you get just to shoot spherical video.
Really, this is a sphere of video
where you can choose any piece of that sphere
to point at and use.
And that's what makes this
the most versatile camera I've ever seen.
So this X3 is the latest version here
to shoot this way.
It has a new 1/2-inch sensor, like I said.
It can shoot 5.7K 360 video with HDR
or 8K time lapses if you want.
It has a new 2.3-inch touch screen with tempered glass.
And the whole thing is waterproof
up to 33 feet with an IPX8 rating
with an 1800 milliampere hour removable battery inside.
And so then the whole Insta360 advantage,
their whole thing is the ability to take advantage
of the fact that it's always shooting this whole sphere
of video all the time.
So if you can picture it, you're just holding a ball
of 360 degree video and you can put it wherever you want.
So that opens up a massive world of possibilities.
So lemme show you some of the things you can do ranging
from the simplest to the craziest and most impressive.
So the simple one is called Me Mode.
You've probably seen this one before.
You can hold out the camera on a selfie stick
and it tracks you and focuses on you automatically.
This is already kind of wild
that it looks like there's just a camera floating out
in front of you.
It can kind of look like a pseudo drone shot
if you move it around over your head enough.
But it's basically just stitching out the selfie stick
and it can export a regular looking widescreen video
from a crazy perspective.
So then, okay, there's what I like to call GTA Mode,
which is basically using the extended selfie stick
mounted to a vehicle
so that it's basically floating off the back.
And thanks to tracking,
it has this sick like first person view of an actual car
driving down an actual street.
You might have seen some of these shots
on Instagram.
At least I know I have.
I really like, though,
this next one which is called First Person Mode.
This is something I'm actually gonna start using more
on the auto-focused channel that we just started
because believe it or not holding a phone in one hand
while driving down the highway with the other
is not actually the safest thing to do.
So all you have to do for First Person
is put the camera either on your head
or literally hold in your mouth,
and then track the part of the sphere that faces forward.
And boom, not only do you have a first person,
wide-angle shot of what I'm seeing as I drive,
but it's super out of the way and it's very useful.
Fun fact, the other side of the sphere looks like this.
Some people have called this Nose Mode.
You might have seen some clips like this, also,
all over the internet.
But probably the craziest thing I've seen
in this software is something called Bullet Time.
This is just literally swinging this camera
around your head on a string.
So Insta360 actually makes a cord just for this feature.
It's got a 1/4-20 screw at the end.
You connect them and you swing the camera around
in slow motion and it can make some pretty sweet videos.
Kind of an advanced selfie
showing off your environment in 360 degrees.
So it's a pretty complex system that's very capable.
But the craziest part of all this
is that it's all edited on your phone.
It's all done in the Insta360 app.
So that makes it this sort of next level of accessible.
I've been talking about starting YouTube channel
on your phone, making videos on your phone.
You can do all of this with the camera
and one app on your phone.
And render times are not bad either.
So just going through a clip you've shot on this camera
and asking it to track something.
It tracks faster than real time, which is sick.
And you can do a whole Sky Swap of a video clip
in a few seconds.
It just analyzes the whole clip
and then does a pretty solid convincing Sky Swap.
And if you think about it at all,
it is much faster, much faster than any Adobe app
or motion graphics tool that I've tried.
But the whole point is any effect you wanna achieve
can be done within the app.
So whether it's something super complex like Bullet Time
or just some simple reframing,
just moving around that sphere of video
using keyframing and even using the gyroscope of your phone
to point at new things and adjust your shot.
It all works very smoothly.
No matter what you always have the whole sphere to play with
and you can move around and create a custom video
of whatever angles you want super quickly.
You can get really creative with it.
So this is a $449 camera
and the app on your phone and a selfie stick.
And that's it. That's the whole system.
So I'm gonna be adding this to the arsenal
for the auto-focused channel, for sure.
There is also some accessories.
There's this guy, which is a reader accessory.
So instead of having to take out the battery,
which is removable, to get to the micro SD card,
you can just plug it straight into your phone
and grab files that way.
There is also a mic jack accessory.
So you get plug in via USB-C and then there's a mic jack.
So things to sort of add a little bit of production quality
to this camera that's already pretty solid on its own.
And there's also other smart features like Loop Recording
which records every 30 minutes,
and you can use it as a dash cam.
So are there any weaknesses?
Basically, the only one that I found is
with a 360 setup like this with back to back cameras,
if you put the subject right on the seam,
like on the edge of where the two cameras are recording,
where it's stitching them together,
you can get some distortion,
especially if you're very close to the camera.
But it's pretty easy to shoot around that.
It's easy to change the orientation
to just make sure somewhere in the sphere is the subject.
And then you're good.
So yeah, realistically, this is the most versatile camera
I've ever seen and actually used.
And honestly, I don't even scratch the surface
of the creativity that I've seen people do
with these cameras.
Again, all over my Instagram feed,
I've seen people like throwing this around,
doing fake drone shots.
I saw somebody actually throw it off of a cliff
next to somebody who is diving
and it just fell into the water.
But of course, the sphere captured the person
diving right next to the camera.
Just cool stuff.
So naturally I'm gonna be bringing this
into auto-focused videos.
First person driving shots,
maybe selfie stick outside of the car stuff,
things like that.
But go ahead and subscribe over there
if you wanna see that stuff.
I'll have a link below to the channel.
I also have a link below to the camera itself.
And thanks again to Insta360 for sponsoring this look.
But that's pretty much been it.
Thanks for watching and I catch you guys in the next one.
Peace.