My 360° photo journey - Part 2

All parts of the journey: 1 2

Quite a few things happened since my last 360° photography related post.

First of all I open-sourced KUK360. Distribution via Microsoft Store did not meet my expectations. I paid 90 € store registration fee and received just 46 € from sales in almost 4 years. Money aside, I found Microsoft Store to be very limiting. My family and friends could not install the app easily, they needed Microsoft account, promo codes etc. Heck, even I did not use the store version myself, I was using local development version instead 🙃. I had zero motivation to enhance the app and add new features. So after a thorough consideration, I unlisted the app from Microsoft Store and released it as open source on GitHub. It is completely free now so if you’d like to use it, just run Next-Next-Finish installer and enjoy 😉

I also started a new hobby - climbing - and my 360° camera climbs with me (safely stored in a second chalk bag attached to my harness). When it comes to 360° photos I still prefer my t/rusty Xiaomi Mi Sphere. Its highly reliable AUTO mode and mechanical shutter button on the selfie stick form an unbeatable combo for extreme conditions. I cannot imagine adjusting camera settings or using any other shutter option during my climbs. But I bought this camera in July 2018, and now, it is more than five years old. It still has original battery installed and I am terrified of the day when it stops working.

So I kind of started to look for a replacement camera and I decided to give Insta360 X3 a try. I bought it in January 2023, and after a year of use, I feel qualified to put together a list of its pros and cons:

• ❌ Fragile lenses
  Insta360 X3 is advertised as an action cam but it has EXTREMELY fragile lenses. Before I bought it I had seen a lot of people complaining online that they scratched the lenses. At first I though they were not treating the camera properly but then I scratched one lens on my camera too. I was at home, no stress, no harsh conditions, just trying to mount the camera on my helmet. I would never take it to a real rock climbing session after that. It would not survive.
• ❌ Poor photo quality
  Insta360 X3 takes 72MP (119685984 px) photos in normal mode and 18MP (59522976 px) photos in HDR mode. The reality however is that those 72MP photos have subjectively lower visual quality than 23MP (6912*3456 px) photos taken with Xiaomi Mi Sphere. And HDR photos are almost never sharp enough when taken with the handheld selfie stick (tripod is obviously not an option for me). So I don’t use it for photography.
• ❌ Unsuitable shutter options
  Insta360 X3 offers a bunch of shutter options. Sadly none of them matches the convenience of a mechanical shutter button integrated in the selfie stick. For example an app on smartphone/smartwatch requires me to use two hands which most of the times is not an option when climbing. Voice control requires me to shout “take photo” several times which is not a cool thing to do in echoing places. I tried using button on camera body along with a shutter timer but it requires me to first slide selfie stick down and then get it back up fast. It’s not a move you want to do when climbing. I probably could ducktape bluetooth remote to the selfie stick, but I did not even bother as I cannot afford to troubleshoot bluetooth connection issues while climbing.
• ✔️ Great video capabilities
  Insta360 X3 is GREAT for video recording. This cam is advertised with “shoot first, frame later” slogan and it’s completely true. Captured 360° video can be reframed very easily in the mobile app where video angles can be changed by simply moving the phone in a space around you. That’s a KILLER OPTION and it allowed me to me create very unique hiking videos that I published on a social media platforms. For an example take a look at my winter hike video or summer hike video.
• ✔️ Replaceable batteries
  Built-in battery in Xiaomi Mi Sphere dies quickly in freezing temperatures. Insta360 X3 has replaceable battery so I can always keep a spare one in a warmth near my body and replace it when needed. In winter that’s an indisputable advantage.
• ✔️ Software updates
  Insta360 keeps both mobile and desktop apps constantly updated. That’s another indisputable advantage. I prefer iPhone over Android phones for the exact same reason.

To sum it up, I found Insta360 X3 to be a very good tool for 360° videography and a very bad tool for 360° photography. And I cannot agree with the statement it is an action cam. It is NOT. Otherwise I wouldn’t be still climbing with Xiaomi Mi Sphere 😉

OK, that’s enough of ranting for now 🙃. I’ll end this post with a few photos taken last year with Xiaomi Mi Sphere on via ferratas (climbing routes that employs steel cables fixed to the rock).

Please note that photos are published here in their full resolution of 6912*3456 pixels but with JPEG quality reduced to 50% in order to decrease their size and save the bandwidth.

360° Photo - Ferrata Zobor - Slovakia

360° Photo - Hans von Haidsteig Klettersteig - Austria

360° Photo - Ferrata Priečne sedlo - Slovakia

360° Photo - Ferrata Dve veže - Slovakia

360° Photo - Königschusswandsteig Klettersteig - Austria

360° Photo - Kaiser Franz Joseph Klettersteig - Austria

360° Photo - Ferrata HZS Martinské hole - Slovakia

All parts of the journey: 1 2

Copyright © 2022-2024 Jaroslav IMRICH. All rights reserved.
None of the photos linked above may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.