I've always been interested in 360 cameras, but the idea of working with 360
footage has always felt very intimidating.
So today I want to explain how the Insta360 ONEX2 INSTAntly made me do a
180 on how I felt about 360 cameras.
Now I should say that Insta did send me this ONE X2 for free,
but I have no obligation to make a video about it or say anything about it.
And in fact, they sent it to me about seven or eight months ago...
The reason I'm making this video now is because this has become literally one
of the most fun cameras I've ever used,
and now I feel entirely differently about 360 footage.
And this literally does live in my camera bag and goes with me
everywhere that I take a camera.
So what the heck is the Insta360 ONE X2?
(I can never remember the name.)
It's a 360 action camera.
So here's the GoPro Hero 10 for comparison in terms of size.
It is a little bit taller, but it's also skinnier.
You've got two 180 degree lenses
and when those powers combine, they give you a full 360 degree field of view.
And the Insta360 does also have the magic ability when you have it mounted
on a stick to eliminate the stick, which means if you're walking around with it,
it just looks like it's floating there and you can't see the stick at all.
I don't know how they do it, but I shall never get tired of that stick shtick.
So stick with me.
Now this camera does have some pretty impressive specifications.
It does shoot up to 5.7K footage.
It's waterproof up to 10 meters, and it has incredible stabilization.
You might've even seen some footage from these where people
are going on like looped roller coasters, but the camera looks like
it's just staying totally level.
Like the horizon never moves.
Again, magic.
Don't know how they do that.
And here's a quick comparison of the stabilization between the
Insta360 and the GoPro Hero 10.
It's doggone cute.
It's pretty well built and pretty easy to use.
You've got your two lenses at the top
of course, you have your screen right here.
You have a 1/4 20 Mount on the bottom, and then the side over here,
you have a little flap that opens up to give you a USB C port. And you also have
a giant battery that pops out right there.
This is a huge battery.
And this thing does get amazing battery life.
I basically never worry about the battery life with it.
I kind of forget to charge it sometimes because the battery lasts so long on it.
And then it does take a micro SD card that goes in the
battery compartment right there.
And one thing that's very important is when you open these flaps or
insert the battery to make sure that they're fully connected.
That little orange bit right there means that this isn't fully in place.
And once I push it down, that goes away.
So if you see orange, that means these aren't fully
closed, which is very important. (Orange you glad I told you?)
If you're planning to use this underwater, because then it would break.
Now I've tried to take really good care of this in the time that I've
had it, but I've also used it a lot and it's pretty durable, but there
are some signs of use, which is fine.
There are different packages that come with different accessories
and mine came with a sleeve
and it also came with this little rubber thing that goes on to protect the lenses.
So when it's in both of these, it's very well protected.
Mine also did come with the micro SD card and it came with these things
right here: the tripod and The Stick™
If you're going to get this camera, you really got to get the stick.
I know you might feel like a dork with a selfie stick walking around,
but this is really what lets you– here,
let's turn this on actually.
So the power button is on the side.
If I turn it on, you'll see the little round display open up
and this is a touch display.
We'll do 5.7K at 24fps.
Hit record.
And the cool thing about a 360 camera– here
I can put it right here– is it doesn't matter where I point the camera.
What you'll notice is even though I have the stick on it, you won't be able to see
the stick in the footage from the camera.
The only thing you really need to pay attention to when positioning a 360
camera, which I'm still getting used to
because it's weird, is really just the height of the camera.
Because if I want to show you like the top of my camera here, I need to make
sure that this is high enough to do that.
If it's low, even though you'll be able to see the camera, you won't be able
to see, you know, above it or below it.
So it's just important to make sure that the camera's positioned
at the height that you want.
And then
that's pretty much it, you just point it wherever you want
and you're done. Now, in addition to video, you can also take
photos which is really fun.
There are all kinds of different things that you can do to do: long
panoramic photos, or small earth photos, or like 360 degree photos.
And I was impressed because the tripod that came with it is Sirui
branded tripod and they make
camera supports and also lenses.
My awesome anamorphic lens that I love is a Sirui lens. But the real
feature of the tripod is I can unlock it, mount the camera on the side, and
then you will be be-sides yourself
probably when we go outside, I can swing it around like a crazy person and
then do something called "Bullet Time."
And Bullet Time takes some practice,
but it's really fun.
Basically, you do an action and you just swing the camera around safely above you
where you're trying not to hit anybody.
And the camera can tell that it's being spun and it sort of does like
The Matrix time is frozen and the camera spins around you kind of move.
It's really cool.
It does take a little bit of practice, and I should also say there have been
more than one occasion where I've also swung it into the ground.
So be very careful not to hit anyone when you're doing that.
And try not to hurt the camera too.
As I'm talking about all these features like Bullet Time and
360 photos and 360 footage,
znd all of that, what you're probably asking yourself is, "How much of a pain
is it to actually make those things?"
Because that's what stopped me from using 360 cameras in the past was the
workflow sucked.
And honestly, I think the camera's biggest strength in a way is the application–
or the applicationS that come with it,
beause there's more than one.
There's a mobile application that works really well
and lets you do everything just from a phone or a tablet and you can even export
and post stuff directly from there.
And then there's actually a very feature rich desktop application where
even if you have no experience using key frames or anything like that,
it's so easy to use and intuitive that you'll be able to figure it out.
And so a lot of times what I do, even though you can work with 360
footage directly from within Final Cut Pro and a lot of video editors,
I just use the Insta360 application.
And then I just export that and put that footage directly into Final Cut Pro.
When you're working with 360 footage there's kind of two ways to approach it.
One is to make a 360 video where the person watching can
either like scroll around,
look around the room or can literally do like a VR thing
and look and see everything.
Or you can do a regular video file, but since you have filmed with
a 360 camera, you can reframe– *beep boop*
You can reframe and recompose.
You can also use your phone to start and stop recording and transfer footage
if you don't want to deal with taking out a micro SD card.
And the application of course is free.
The desktop one is called Insta360 Studio.
So here's a good example.
I'm going to open up this clip right here of us driving up
to the snow with our dogs one day.
It just looks like a normal video,
except what I can do is click and drag around pan around and see everything.
I can look at the sky.
I can look down below.
I can look in...360 degrees, but as I'm playing through this, I
can do something really cool.
So I can just click this little plus icon right here and mark
this first frame as a key frame.
And I do have options.
I can try to make it look natural where it's not going to be super distorted.
I can make it look like crystal ball.
I can do the tiny planet effect, I can do just the default, like action cam fisheye look,
but let's say I wanted to mix this footage in with "regular" footage and
I don't want it to look super action.
Camera-y.
I'm going to click on "Natural View" and then I'm just going
to try to frame up the shot.
And now I've got my key frame right there, and then I can just play that for a bit.
And I'll say at this point, I'm going to add another key frame and right after
that, I want the camera to pan around.
So now I want it to show where we're going.
So I can just do that add another key frame.
And now as I play the sequence back,
we start with one angle and the camera will just move to the other angle.
I can add another key frame that like
now shows what we're driving past, because now it's going to do a whip pan over
there and we see what we're driving by.
And then we can even do another one at this point.
I think at some point in time, there he is, our dog sticks
his head out the window.
I want to make sure we catch that.
So I'm going to add a key frame here and I want to play this whole clip back.
It's going to start showing us in the car,
the camera's going to show where the car is going,
it's going to hang out there for a little bit- and notice how stable it is too-
and then it's going to whip around and show what we're driving by.
And then it's also going to go over here just in time to see our dog Ben stick
his head out the window and enjoy life.
And I could also, if I wanted,
I can not only change the composition, but I can zoom in.
So now I can do like a zoom and a push and a reframe and a recomp.
This is great.
Why would you not want to do this?!
And when you have your key frames, you can also click on them and re-edit them.
So if you decide you don't like something, you can adjust it.
You can also just delete them if you want to delete them.
But if I just want to take a 360
bit of footage and turn it into multiple shots that I can cut up later.
in Final Cut Pro,
what I can do is something like this.
I can start with our normal key frame because I want to show that I can just
create another key frame over here,
and I don't really care about the camera movement in between or how
smooth it is or anything like that.
And I can just have this shot going for awhile.
And when I export this clip, I know I'm going to have this angle and then I can
cut to this angle here and in Final Cut
I can go between these and it's going to look like now
I've got two different camera shots
even though it's literally one piece of footage. And doing this all on your
phone is basically the same thing.
It's a little smaller and more compact, because you're on a phone screen, but
you have all of the same flexibility.
And then when you're all done, you just click export.
And this is where you can decide when you're exporting.
If you want to do a reframed video, which is what I've done here or
a full on 360 video where you don't lose everything. You
can select your resolutions.
So I'm going to do 4k
beause my video is 4k.
I'm going to increase the bit rate as much as I can. The sound
that this app makes when it's done exporting is my favorite part.
*Magic Tada Ding* There it is, makes me excited every time something exports from the application.
The app also has a ton of other features, including a really
awesome tracking function
that can be a super fun way to make the most of having that 360 degree field of view.
So having something this simple on your computer or on your phone is really
what makes this a viable option for me. I don't care how good the image quality is,
I don't care what the features are,
if the footage is a nightmare to process and work with and deal
with, I'm never going to use it.
So on top of the footage being easy to edit, I do think that it
is really good looking footage.
Now, if you're looking for just the best action camera,
I actually do think that the GoPro Hero 10 has the best image quality.
Most action cameras are going to look really good in a brightly lit situation,
and most action cameras are not going to look as good in a dim situation.
I haven't used the other more modular Insta360 cameras, and I haven't used
the DJI modular action camera, but I have watched A LOT of videos
about them, and I still think that the GoPro Hero 10 footage in bright
daylight is still the best footage.
So if you just want a small action camera that's waterproof, and is
going to give you the best image quality,
I do think the GoPro has an edge, but of course the GoPro is not a 360 camera.
So if you want any of that 360 capability, any of that reframing capability,
then I think this is definitely the way to go, especially because it's
so easy to work with the footage.
So if you're in the market for one of these, I think it's really important
to ask yourself the role that 360 footage will play in your workflow.
Now you might not have any interest in doing a 360 video or VR thing,
those can be fun though, for sure.
But if you like the idea of being able to reframe your footage, then
this is definitely the way to go.
If you just want simple, straightforward action camera then of course the GoPro
is one of my absolute favorites and it is a bit cheaper than the Insta360.
I was very skeptical about these cameras before I used one myself.
And now that I've had it for months and months on end and I've used it,
I really love this camera.
It's fun.
I take it everywhere.
It's so easy to just carry with you, and speaking of things that are awesome.
thank you to everyone who helps support my channel through Patreon
and YouTube Channel Memberships.
And if you do want some more action packed action camera info,
check out this review right here.