Insta360, a company that offers a 360 degree camera, today announced the launch of an exclusive Insta360 ONE Camera Bundle that's available only from the Apple Store.
The bundle, priced at $329.95, includes an Insta360 ONE camera, a selfie stick, a case, a mini tripod, a micro SD card, and a new bullet-time handle.
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Designed to attach to an iPhone's Lightning port or connect to an iPhone using Bluetooth, the Insta360 ONE Camera allows users to shoot and livestream 360 degree video and capture 360 degree photos.
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Using a FreeCapture mode, the camera lets you shoot footage in 360 degrees and then go back and edit to a traditional 1080p format, so you can shoot an entire scene and then go back later to pick out what you want to highlight.
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With the bullet-time handle, the Insta360 ONE camera can orbit a scene while suspended in mid-air, recording action in slow motion, hence the bullet-time name.
The new Insta360 ONE Camera Bundle is available from the Apple online store starting today, and it should be in retail stores later this week.
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(View all)But you can still see unlimited examples by downloading the free Insta360 ONE app. There are two free apps actually - one is the Insta360 ONE app and one is the Insta360Player. Both have their uses - both very poorly explained by the Insta company. The Insta360 ONE app has a tab called "Explore" at the bottom where everyone who has one of these cameras can publicly share their 360s. There are a bazillion in there to check out. That will give you a very good idea of the resolution and dynamic range.
The Insta360Player doesn't do much when you open it and seems kind of useless, but is very useful for people like me who only want to share their pictures with family directly. I finally figured out that the workflow is to take the picture, and then in the Insta360 ONE app in the album section open the picture for viewing, then click the share link at the top right, then choose the Album button. This causes the app to export the 360 as a rectilinear image to your camera roll. Then you can email it or imessage it to family and friends. On their side they save it to their camera roll and then open it in the Insta360Player by clicking the + sign and choosing Local Album. I don't really make 360 videos, but I would imagine this process would work for that too.
The image quality is good, but not great. It reminds me of the Sony Mavica cameras of old even though it's taking a 20 someodd megapixel image it's getting stretched across the entire 360 so it doesn't go as far as it needs to yet. I'm sure the CMOS will improve over time as prices come down. They have a pro camera that I think they need to be careful not to cannibalize. All that said, it's definitely good enough for me! The dynamic range is pretty good actually. Windows don't blow out as badly as you would think, and the camera can record in RAW.
The best things about this camera in my opinion are the small size, the self hiding, the battery life, and the ability to reframe afterwards. Self-hiding: The zenith of the 360 stitch has been engineered to fall at the camera location itself. What this means is that the camera automatically stitches itself out of the images - which is very cool. Anything that sits directly below the camera regardless of the camera orientation is also stitched out. What this means is that a selfie stick directly below the camera is also stitched out automatically. With a straight selfie stick directly into the camera the image looks like it was taken with gods eye instead of you holding a selfie stick. Really cool. Battery: The battery lasts most of the day if you charge it the night before. I only use it for images so far, so mabye with video that's not the case? I can't speak to that. But for me I could take it around all day and take stills all I wanted without worrying about recharge. Reframe: since the video and images are 360 you can view the environment from any angle and take regular pictures afterwards. The app has a snapshot button. So frame up your image and click snapshot and you get that picture like a normal picture in your camera roll. Awesome. It can do the same thing with video. Take a video, and then later go into "free camera" mode. Anywhere you aim your phone captures the movie as if you were there pointing your phone camera like normal. crazy. Shoot now, frame later.
I think it's water resistant, and I did take pictures in the snow and rain with no problems.
I bought this camera to document a home renovation project, but I've used it a lot more than I thought I would. If the resolution was better this thing would likely replace my phone camera. I could also imagine Apple or Samsung putting this tech in phones. It's super cool I think. The one real pain point for me is that the camera does not record GPS metadata. I think it should use the GPS from the phone, but it doesn't.