At this time of year my normal style of photography is curtailed by the very late light nights where dark doesn't arrive soon enough. And when I do stay up late to take advantage of dark skies, I end up with a sleep deprived hangover the following day. And not wishing to walk around like a forlorn zombie for a day, I decided it was time to bite the bullet on a 360 degree camera, the Insta360 x5.
I have bought this camera primarily for work purposes. I conduct building surveys for garage workshop developments and this camera will be quite useful going forward.
The Insta360 x5 is also quite a useful tool for leisure purposes too!
This post isn't intended to be a long one with me waffling on about photos as usual. It's more of a test post to see if I can upload content from the Insta360 desktop app. Here goes....
Sherwood 360
I took a trip in to Sherwood Forest with the new camera. I'm lucky to live right next to the infamous/ famous forest and it's reputation for robbers in the wood still apply today in my home town which would have formerly been part of the forest too.
This is a "tiny planet" view from a 360 degree photograph. I positioned the selfie stick on a small tripod and hid behind a tree, out of sight. I fired the camera remotely from my phone and found the range to be quite good at maybe 15 mtrs away.
The file size on this image is 10,000 pixels across so I've had to reduce the pixel resolution somewhat to make it fit here:
This is where it's all been going wrong....
Hopefully the reader of this post will be able to see this YouTube video I made earlier. I've been trying to link this to FB but a thumbnail will not appear in the FB post. I find FB very frustrating and another reminder why I keep coming back to Hive!
If you can see this video, please comment below and let me know if it appears in 4k. Thanks!!
Sherwood Rotate!
Since this YouTube upload thing appears to be working on Hive, here's another experiment. So far first impressions of the Insta360x5 are good, I just need to get to grips with the software and exporting! The camera itself and the iPhone app are easy to use and capture images, just the exporting bit is a little tricky!
About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in landscape, urbex and artistic model photography. I like to collaborate with other photographers and occasionally shoot outside my comfort zone.
Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/fastchrisuk
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fastchris/
The still you've shared makes it look as though the trees are an eye. They're more like lungs in function, but the way 360 cameras distort perspective in a flat image, it could be a microscope slide of lung tissue.
To my mind, tiny planet photos are usually a gimmick, but the one you've presented here is a format I've not seen before, and it is executed really well. :)
Thanks @holoz0r I'm with you on the gimmick thing. The quality off a phone app always looked terrible but with this camera, this image (originally before Hive blew the resolution) was 10,000 pixels across. It's a great device to discover what I can do, especially long exposure lightpainting.
Makes me think that there's potential for a drone with a bulb shutter - provided the drone can remain entirely stable, the things you could do with an aerial view of a city street would be incredible...
Actually, that gives me an idea for an image, but it wouldn't be too difficult to pull off, so I'll describe it here instead :P
Not exactly controlled light painting, but a view from above, down onto a city street at about a 35 degree angle, in the early evening. A trail of smart phone screens illuminating the paths along which people have walked following their work day / event / conference whatever. Kind of like a traditional long exposure of cars along a city street, except the "vehicles" are the people's phones.
Light up a single person with rear-curtain sync flash at the end, and I think it would be a wonderful piece. Trying to think of locations in my local area where i could pull this off now... :D
And also to throw in to the mix, move the camera itself as I do occasionally. That's one of the things I have planned with the Insta360x5, shoot a backlit silhouette (for example) then have the model switch on a light and I pan the camera. The technical bits need working out but that's half the fun :-)
Indeed! I’ve been planning another project to do a bulb exposure and run around with a Godox AD200 triggering the flash as the model moves around the composition. It will involve some planning, but I’m confident it can be done with trial and error. :D
I do love the crazy stuff you can do with a 360 camera, I’ve still got a very old Ricoh theta, can’t remember what version it is though but I think it’s the first or second model they released. It only shoots in jpg, but the dynamic range was similar if not the same as the x4, I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with especially night shots matey.
Cheers pal, @dazzler75, I've figured out the settings for light painting, just one small matter of late light nights lol. I'll be out this weekend getting to grips with it ;-)
I’m off to Northumberland in a couple of weeks, wanting to do some milky way stuff, definitely will be late nights then, I think I’ve booked wrong time of year lol
You have worked beautifully with this camera. Great my friend