It’s amazing enough that it was possible to fly a camera over the 1240°C (2264°F) lava flow in the first place, but this is also 360 VR footage, so while you’re watching the video you can pan the camera to look in any direction you like.
It was made possible by the Insta360 Pro 2 360 camera, a high-end 8K VR camera with Insta360’s FlowState image stabilisation and a weight of just over 1.5kg, which means it could be mounted on DJI’s powerful 6-rotor Matrice 600 drone.
You do need a suitable device or player to explore VR video, and that can include mobile devices like phones and tablets. Luckily for us, you can also upload and enjoy 360 VR video on YouTube, too!
The video was shot by Icelandic photographer Ragnar Th. Sigurðsson, who has been a pro photographer for over 30 years and whose work has been published in the New York Times, National Geographic, Times, Nature and Newsweek.
Obviously it took a professional 8K 360 camera, a powerful drone and Ragnar’s skill as a photographer to capture images of this quality, but it shows the potential of 360 imaging and drones, which are well within the reach of average consumers today.
Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com
