- So, maybe you've seen them.
You're scrolling through Facebook,
and all of a sudden you come to a video
that starts to wobble in a weird way,
and all of a sudden, you realize,
it's moving based on the movement of your phone.
You end up holding out your phone in front of you,
and looking around in this video, and it's pretty cool,
because wherever you look you can see in the video,
that is, until you realize that everybody is staring at you,
'cause you're in a cafe and look crazy.
360 photos and videos are something
that's getting picked up alongside VR.
To clarify really quickly, 360-degree photos and videos
are not necessarily VR.
It's simply photos or videos that can be taken with a camera
that covers 360 degrees around that camera.
Regardless of what you call it, though,
360-degree content is a really neat way
to at least give somebody a slight glimpse
into what it would be like to be standing next to you
while you're experiencing something.
There are a lot of these cameras coming out onto the market,
slowly, but the one that's probably got the most publicity
and the most buzz behind it, is the Samsung Gear 360.
There are a couple of reasons why this device
is getting a lot of buzz,
one of them being that it does hook up
to any Galaxy phone that's a newer Galaxy phone,
so that you can have a live view
of whatever the camera sees.
The other reason is that it is a 360-degree camera
that can shoot in 4k, and only costs about $350.
It does this using two super-wide angle 15MP cameras
that are each facing opposite direction,
whose field of view overlaps one another.
Essentially, this provides two videos or photos
that look like this.
Then, you can take that footage from the Gear
via the Gear 360 companion app,
if you have a compatible phone,
or via an SD-card reader to manually drag and drop it
from the microSD card that it records to.
If you choose to use the companion app, it'll actually
stitch these two recordings together for you, magically,
removing what is called stitch lines as best as it can.
If you use the microSD method, then you'll need
to use the included Gear 360 Action Director program
to have it do that for you.
Unfortunately, though, this program that it comes with
only works for Windows, so if you have a Mac,
and you don't have a Galaxy-compatible device,
then you're going to have to scour the internet
for a different 360 editing program
that will most likely also cost you a little bit of money.
After you have the photo or video all stitched up, though,
you can just pop it into your photo or video editor,
and edit it like you normally would.
Once you're ready to share the content,
you'll need to just make sure it is in the proper format,
and has the proper meta tags for YouTube or Facebook,
which are the two major platforms
that can recognize and support 360 content,
to recognize it as 360 content,
and display it appropriately.
So, now, of course, it's a lot easier
to just use the 360 companion app and a compatible phone,
which is what Samsung is probably hoping you'd really do,
but, if you don't have one of those,
or if you just want to do some proper editing
on a computer or color correcting, or any of that stuff,
the workflow from capture to share is not too terrible.
Shooting with the Gear 360 is actually pretty easy.
There's only a handful of shooting modes,
and a handful of settings you can even mess around with.
In the settings you can adjust
what size you want the videos or photos to be.
The auto-shutoff timer and recording timer.
Other than that you can adjust
if you want to shoot out of both lenses or just one.
The shooting modes allow you to choose between
video, photo, time-lapse video,
where it shoot one frame every specified amount of time,
or video looping, which allows it to automatically create
a video that will restart after it gets to the end.
To navigate the menus and shooting modes,
you use the menu button on the side of the Gear 360,
and the record button on the top to select.
The only other button on the Gear 360
allows you to select Back,
and is also the power button if you hold it down.
The Gear 360 also has a small handle you can hold
while shooting that can spread into small feet
for setting it down on something,
but that can be unscrewed to reveal a normal camera mount,
should you want to use some other grip setup.
Since there aren't that many cameras out there doing 360,
it's a pretty short list of competitors,
and then if you take the fact
that it's 360 content that is shot in 4k,
that list gets even shorter.
All the competitors out there that do shoot in 4k
have similar companion apps, similar specs,
a lot of similar features, frankly,
but where they can't compete,
or have a hard time, at least, is the price.
The Kodak PixPro SP360, for example, is $500 on Amazon,
the Insta360 is $550, and the closest priced camera
I could find with similarly good reviews was the 360fly,
which is still $420.
To get the live preview mode,
you need to have one of the compatible Galaxy phones,
so if that is important to you,
seeing what you are shooting at the moment,
then not having one of those phones is a pretty big factor,
whether you want to buy this camera or another one
that might have a universal app instead.
If you're like me, though, and you're used to shooting
with GoPro's for these type of adventure shots,
you don't necessarily need to see the footage
until you're done, and you're ready to edit,
and, also, the fact that it doesn't have a frame,
like even a GoPro would, like,
there's no setting up the shot in the same way.
You just hold it, or set it down,
and it captures everything, so,
it's even less important, to me at least,
to see the live preview.
That means, that if you have one of those compatible phones,
and you want to shoot 360 content,
based on the features and the price of this camera,
it's kind of a no-brainer as to which one you should get.
If you don't have one of those phones,
then you really need to decide
on how important live preview mode is for you,
and then, also, if you don't have a PC,
you need to decide how much you're willing to spend
on a 360 editing program,
because you need that to do stitching,
it's gonna cost you extra if you have a Mac.
All in all, it's definitely worth taking a look at,
and the biggest issue that you're gonna have with it,
is the same one you'll have with every 360 camera out there,
and that's what the hell do I shoot in 360?
There you go, guys, let me know
what you guys thought of this video,
and what you think of the Gear 360.
Is it cool, is 360 content a gimmick
and it's gonna be gone in, you know, a couple of months,
I don't know, you tell me.
Also, if you guys want to see
some of the content that I shot in 360,
'cause I couldn't put that in this video,
'cause you can't make a video 360 at one point,
and then not, click the link below
to be taken to my playlist for all the things
that I shot with the Gear 360.
I ended up at a festival in the desert at one point,
and a bunch of other stuff,
so it's kind of cool, you should check it out.
Otherwise, if you like this video,
please thumbs-up it, or share it,
it is greatly appreciated,
and if you want more videos like this,
please subscribe to the YouTube channel,
and, as always, thanks for watching.