This is the Xphase, a 360 camera with 25 lenses and a 200 megapixel resolution
and it's also surprisingly affordable and even though it has such high
resolution it's actually not its most amazing feature there's one more feature
that it has that I haven't seen in any other camera we're gonna talk about its
specifications and its features including three key advantages I'll show you how
to use it and then we'll take a look at some sample photos both indoors and
outdoors and even a few in low-light we'll talk about who this cameras for
and I'll show you five ways to use its high resolution and it's not just for
virtual tours my name is Mic and this channel is about 360 and 3PV (third person view)
if you want to learn how to shoot without aiming or how to capture a
third-person view hit subscribe and learn about this
exciting new way to capture your photos and videos what if you could get the
detail of a DSLR with the convenience of a 360 camera well that's the concept
behind the XPhase so the XPhase is a 360 camera with 25 sensors and each
sensor is an 8 megapixel BSI CMOS sensor so there are three rows of 7 sensors and
then there are two more on top and two more on the bottom it's amazingly
compact for a camera with 25 sensors I mean look at that here's the gear 360
with two lenses and this one that's 25 and they're almost the same size well
excluding the handle of course that's an amazing feat of engineering now unlike
most 360 cameras that use circular fisheye lenses the Xphase uses
wide-angle rectilinear lenses so each sensor uses the full 8 megapixels that
gives it a big advantage for resolution it but sacrifices stitching how good
this is stitching we'll find out later it has 25 sensors and you have 8
megapixels each that's why they call it a 200 megapixel 360 camera but the
stitched resolution is actually 16384 by 8192
by comparison typical 360 cameras are around 15 to 16 megapixels so that's
almost 9 times as much resolution as an ordinary 360 camera so when I saw the
XPhase specifications and its features and then I saw its price I said man this
can't be real it sounds too good to be true now we've all seen those cameras
with super high specs and it turns out that it's actually not as good yeah and
I was honestly worried that the XPhase would be one of those cameras especially
for the price right so I was really skeptical
it was also worried about the workflow with 25 sensors I was bracing for a
really complicated workflow I had the chance to use a pre-release version of
the XPhase Pro and I went to Pasadena to take some test shots what I saw
surprised me but first let's learn how to shoot with the XPhase. To shoot with
the XPhase is really easy even though it has 25 lenses and looks complicated
the workflow is simple and works either on the phone or desktop here's the
XPhase it has only one button if you press this button it's gonna take a
photo or if you double click then it's gonna activate a 5 second self timer and
take a shot you can do a triple click for a 10 second timer or a quadruple
click for a 20 second self timer to my surprise XPhase was as detailed as it
claimed to be
besides its high resolution XPhase has three key advantages and number one by
the way this is the feature that I told you about that I haven't seen in any
other camera 360 or otherwise HDR without ghosting normally when there's
any movement it shows up as ghosting in the HDR image. The XPhase can take
HDR photos without ghosting so there could be movement anywhere in the photo
but there would be no ghosting in fact the camera itself could be moving and
there would still be no ghosting now that's amazing and allows you to take
HDR in situations that would otherwise have been impossible. Number two is stitching
so normally high-resolution 360 cameras use more than two lenses and because of
that the lenses have greater distance between each other so there's greater
parallax stitching error so the minimum stitching distance is usually five feet
or greater with the XPhase they claim a minimum stitching distance of one foot (30cm).
is that real? we'll find out later and number three is price this is the Theta Z1
it has two sensors it has a resolution of 24 megapixels this is $999. this
is the Aletta S2C it has five sensors it has a resolution of 66 megapixels this
is $1,200 this is the panono it has 36 lenses and the resolution of 108
megapixels this is about $2,100 this of course is the XPhase with 25 sensors a
resolution of 200 megapixels and its $879 so now you know why a lot of people are
excited about this camera and in addition I talked to the distributor to
give you guys a special deal so you can get a free 128 GB storage on top of the
32 gigs that it comes with all you have to do is use my special link in the
description below now if you want to change the settings
you'll need to use the app it's really easy to use and it's available for both
iOS and Android just connect the Wi-Fi to the XPhase Wi-Fi signal now we can
launch the app tap on connect and you hear the five beeps, you press
the shutter twice now that they're paired you'll be able to control the
XPhase so the settings for shooting appear here so you tap on that and you
can choose between handheld or tripod tripod mode means that it tends to use
the lower ISO to keep the noise level down whereas with handheld it will try
to use the higher shutter speed exposure compensation is plus minus 2EV in
one-third stop increments the exposure tends to be a little bit aggressive it
tends to overexpose so I prefer to set the exposure compensation to -1EV
or even -2EV to preserve the highlights when you're ready to shoot
just click on OK and then press the shutter and it's gonna take the photo
and give it a like about ten seconds you'll hear a double beep which means
it's ready for the next shot now because we've been shooting with the app the
file is actually already transferred to the phone over here and the progress bar
here means that the phone app is actually stitching it for us
so here this icon shows that it's been stitched. then tap on that icon and
here it is here's the fully stitched photo now you that photo is also now on
your phone so you can share it to social media
go to your phone gallery and look for a album called pictures and that's where
you'll find your stitched XPhase Pro photos resolution is 16384 by 8192, all on
your phone! so how's the image quality? the photos have extremely high detail
more detailed than any other 360 camera I've tried chromatic aberration is also
very well controlled the dynamic range is also very good thanks to its HDR and
I'm still amazed how they were able to do HDR without ghosting I can even shoot
photos handheld. how's the stitching? is it
true that the minimum stitching distance is 1 foot? well there's good news and bad
news the good news is that the XPhase
stitching is usually smooth and I can take photos even in small bathrooms and
yes it is even possible for XPhase to stitch as close as one foot. in this shot
my dad's hand is only about one foot from the camera but the stitch looks
pretty good that is truly amazing for a multi-lens camera but there are two
issues first if you are very close to the camera it's more likely you'll get a
stitching error with very tight spaces such as car interiors you will
definitely have stitching errors so I would say a more realistic minimum
stitching distance is around 3 feet. Second, sometimes there are stitching
errors even when there's nothing near the camera and even for distant objects
so the XPhase's stitching is very impressive for multi-lens camera but
it's sometimes imperfect. colors and contrast appear natural although white
balance indoors is not always accurate. one weakness is that XPhase is
susceptible to flare which reduces contrast in affected lenses and also
produces some glare artifacts near the key light.
it also doesn't do so well in low-light. in very low light conditions there's
little detail in shadows finally in my pre-release unit one or more lenses is
slightly back focused. XPhase however claims that this issue will be addressed
in the new upgraded XPhase coming in August 2019. now your phone will stitch
the photos in JPEG format but for higher-quality editing you want to be
able to export them in PNG format it's gonna be 16-bit and its lossless and
you'll have more flexibility to edit your photos so to do that you need to
use the desktop app desktop app has a little bit of a quirky
interface but it's also very easy to use so it's a one step process so you open
the ORI files in Panomanager (the included desktop app) you do that by clicking on this Wi-Fi icon.
I know right? you'll see a folder and you click on that then you select the folder
where your ORI files are stored next you select the photos you want to stitch
and then you click on stitch now you'll have the option to export it in three
formats one is JPEG the other is PNG 16-bit lossless PNG and the third one is
PNO format (proprietary format). now if you choose to export in PNG format there are several settings
you can choose. number one is the white balance and number two is the contrast
and number three is something they call expansion. expanded mode extends the edge
so that you can edit the photo in post-processing then later crop it back
to normal equirectangular ratio to avoid a seam.
it's gonna stitch and fuse the HDR in one step and you can batch export your
photos alright so the high resolution is real but do you really need it
well here are five ways to use that high resolution the number one is virtual
tours a lot of people now offer virtual tours and they're shooting them with 360
cameras. how do you stand out from the competition? well one way is by offering
higher image quality with the XPhase you can offer higher detail than any
other 360 camera. Two: Tiny planets. when you're shooting with the tiny planet the
edges of the frame will look really stretched and pixelated but with the
XPhase's high resolution, even the edges will look detailed. three: distant
subjects. when you're shooting with the 360 camera anything more than a few
feet away is not gonna have much detail but with the XPhase you can take shots
that have detail even for distant objects. Four is pole photography
This is when you take a 360 photo from a really high pole or mast. you'll be able to
capture a unique perspective but this is a very challenging type of 360 photo.
you'll need not just special equipment but also special techniques. you'll need
to keep it stable somehow and second you'll need to be able to capture very
high resolution because from a really high perspective everything's gonna be
distant. Now with the XPhase pole photography is
really easy. not only can you shoot automatically but because the HDR has no
ghosting you'll be able to take photos even handheld! And number five is
supersampling. Even if you don't care about super-high resolution you can still get
much higher image quality by capturing at the higher resolution and then down
scaling it to your preferred resolution now there's something I haven't told you
yet which is how does the XPhase compared to a DSLR panorama and I'm sure you want
to know now the truth is I've already done the test shots I took them last
weekend and I did it with the Aleta S2C, the panono and the Ricoh Theta Z1
but the results were not what I expected so that's gonna be my next video don't
miss it thanks and I'll see you in 360