A few hours before leaving on holiday in 2019, the Insta360 One X arrived in the mail. It came with us for two weeks in Gallipoli and around Brindisi, and it completely changed how I thought about filming with my family.
Film first, frame later
In the video I show a three-minute edit and then my thoughts. What you can do with this camera can blow your mind. I was just walking, holding it on the invisible selfie stick, and every camera move and speed change you see was done in post. That means travelling without the hassle of being in the right place at the right moment. You walk around relaxed with your family, then at your desk you decide the framing, speed it up for a time-lapse or slow it down, depending on the frame rate you shot.
The stabilisation is crazy, I hadn't seen anything like it. And the stitching is amazing: the stick simply disappears from the shot.
Editing
I edited some parts in the phone app and others in the Insta360 software on my Mac. It's really easy. The one thing to improve: some features, like adjusting time-lapse speed, weren't available on the desktop software, so you had to do that on the phone, export, and then bring it into Final Cut or Premiere.
A toy, but a brilliant one
Don't get me wrong, it's a toy. It says 5.7K, but that's not real 5.7K: everything you export ends up in 1080p, because all those other pixels go into the 360 view and stabilisation. It's not the sharpest, but it's great for YouTube and Instagram. It's not an action cam, it's a 360 camera.
Many reviews get very technical. I wanted to see how easy it is to make a video like mine, and the answer is: very easy, with amazing results. It's a toy every YouTuber should keep in their pocket for a blast of creativity. (No drone footage this time: around Brindisi it's a no-fly zone because of the airport.)