Lets' be honest, trying cameras is cool. I mean it's a job, and it takes time and I'm not going to pretend any form of journalism is well remunerated, but, hey, I get to try stuff and that means I have a pretty good idea what is, well, actually good!
That means that when it crosses with something I really like – exciting new-ish ways of capturing images – so much the better. That's why I bought my first 360-degree camera on my own dime and despite my worries it'd ruin a family holiday, it didn't. I do feel like I want more resolution, though, and I grow tired of wating to see if the long-rumored GoPro Max 2 will be a worthy competitor to the Insta360 X4 which I've already tried and is brilliant. Then I see it's on discount too. What's a guy to do?
So why haven't I pulled the trigger on this purchase before? Well, as I said, I already have the Insta360 X3 which is actually pretty darned good too. But resolution does matter, as do a few other refinements – not the least of which is the much better 'lens guard' system that protects the lenses if you want to do something 'active' but is removable. The batter battery is notable too, and the more responsive system was something that made my X3 feel a bit slower after reviewing the X4!
I won't pretend having a 360-degree camera is always easy because the lenses face back-to-back so the lens cap is kinda weird. The fact they are directly back to back is part of the reason Insta360's cameras have better 'stitching' (how the feeds from the two cameras are joined) than the old GoPro Max which had offset cameras.
But you very quickly get past the quirks, and then you start to be able to get all kinds of images you never expected, from amazing timelapses and action you'd not really thought possible. Better yet, you can just leave the camera out on a selfie stick and then decide where to 'point' the camera later.
There are also a host of pre-programmed effects you can apply to your videos, and tweak to your heart's content, using the phone and desktop app AND (a big "Yeay!" for this) plugins for FCP and Premier. These are free to use, too – no subscription. Used sparingly, you see effects like this adding spice to bumpers on TV shows (Taskmaster does it a lot) and it just looks great.
The Creator bundle is quite tempting if you're a first-timer to this too, as you get cool stuff like the bullet time handle, but I've already got these from my X3.
