Insta360 ONE RS 1-inch 360 Edition - co-engineered with Leica

[beewee]

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I’m surprised no one has mentioned this yet: https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-oners/1inch-360

The name is a mouthful but the balance between sensor size, sensitivity, optical performance, physical size and weight is very impressive and opens up some very interesting new possibilities in photography and video.

Can’t wait for mine to arrive.

 

[beewee]

For those who are new to 360 cameras, as I am, I have to give a shoutout to gimbal-guru on youtube who has a ton of videos showing tips to capture unique sequences that are only possible with 360 cameras.

To me, compact high quality 360 cameras is probably the most exciting new development in photography and cinematography since consumer drones like the DJI Mavic series.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[LocalHero1953]

If I buy it, will it come with heart-stopping good looks, a ripped body, awesome athleticism and Olympic snowboarding skills?

[beewee]

23 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

If I buy it, will it come with heart-stopping good looks, a ripped body, awesome athleticism and Olympic snowboarding skills?

There’s only one way to find out. Just make sure you have a good return policy. LOL 😆

[LocalHero1953]

Please post more when you get it. What will you use it for and how will you display the results?

What does the upgrade package give you that the basic package doesn't? (The website is too media-heavy for me to find this out).

[beewee]

7 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Please post more when you get it. What will you use it for and how will you display the results?

What does the upgrade package give you that the basic package doesn't? (The website is too media-heavy for me to find this out).

Sure, can do.

 

My use cases are mainly the following:

• 360 images on mountain summits
• hyperlapses for scenic hikes and ridge walks
• 360 stationary timelapse for mountain summits, scenic places, sun rises, sunsets, night sky milky way, and northern lights
• Short action videos for skiing and some FPV like sequences for interesting trails

There are two main packages:

• Standard package includes 1-inch 360 camera module + ONE RS image processing module + battery + grip holder
  • In addition to the above, you can get it with bundles that include SD cards, selfie sticks, and other accessories
• Upgrade package is for people that already own the ONE RS image processing module so it includes everything in the standard package, minus the ONE RS module.
  • The ONE RS module also supports a non-360 1-inch Leica lens, as well as an older 360 camera module without the new 1-inch sensor and Leica optics.

[beewee]

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I just got the camera this evening.

I did some test shots after the sun went down and my initial impressions for low light is promising. So far, what I can say is:

• For non-raw images exported from the iOS app, ISO 400 is decent but anything higher has too much noise reduction resulting in loss of detail
• ISO 200 vs ISO 400 is almost identical
• Importing DNG raw images into Adobe Lightroom will greatly improve details and allow for more fine adjustments and advanced noise removal
  • ISO 800 DNGs processed in Lightroom can be as good as the ISO 400 exported from the iOS app
  • ISO 1600 DNGs processed in Lightroom can be still very useable if you’re willing to tolerate some noise in the final image to avoid excessive loss of detail
  • ISO 3200 DNGs processed in Lightroom can be used if you really need to but best to shoot at ISO 800 or ISO 1600 if at all possible
• The lens is plenty sharp for the resolution of the sensor but with 360 cameras, everything except for fisheye is a digital crop so you can never have too many pixels.
• Based on the above
  • If I were shooting the Aurora, I’d lean towards shooting 4s exposures at ISO 1600 (Aperture fixed at f/2.2) to maintain a higher shutter speed and compromise slightly on noise.
  • If I were shooting milky-way in very dark sky environments, I would shoot at 40s at ISO 400-800. The nice thing about 6.52mm equivalent fisheye lens is that you can keep the stars fairly sharp with exposures up to around 40 seconds

Some things I need to test more is whether the sensor is ISO invariant or if it has a dual-gain structure. It’s possible that the secondary gain kicks in around ISO 400 since I see almost no difference between ISO 200 vs ISO 400.

[beewee]

I reached out to Bill Claff that runs photonstophotos.net and shared some data with them. I hope we’ll see this camera listed his website once he is able to make use of the unusual 200 degree fisheye images.

Some interesting initial findings so far include:

• DNGs have 10bit data in a 14bit container
  • This is a bit odd and I hope Insta360 updates the camera FW to offer 14bit output or just save the raw DNG in a 10bit container so the files are smaller. As it is right now, the DNGs are around 40MB each
  • Insta360 should also offer a compressed DNG output option since all the data outside of the circular fisheye image circle is useless, they should zero that data out and they can easily do a lossless compression to reduce the file size
  • Since the sensor data is only 10bit, I don’t have that much hope for dynamic range beyond 8-9 stops, even at base ISO
• The sensor has a single stage gain
• There is some baked in vignetting correction that is applied to the DNGs, probably to account for the fisheye lens vignetting

Edited July 15, 2022 by beewee

[Krusty]

Hello, 

i have this camera now too and maybe I am too stupid: But how di I import pictures to the Insta360 Studio App on my Mac? Does the Studio app have a Library like Lr or Mac Photos has or do I just have to create a folder on my local disk and copy the files from the SD-Card via the Finder there and after that I can import that Folder to the Insta360 Studio.app? Does anybody understand why I am confused (maybe I think too complicated)?.

 

I don't want to use my iPhone for editing those images and footages when I have a Mac with a big screen...

[beewee]

On 8/4/2022 at 2:34 PM, Krusty said:

Hello, 

i have this camera now too and maybe I am too stupid: But how di I import pictures to the Insta360 Studio App on my Mac? Does the Studio app have a Library like Lr or Mac Photos has or do I just have to create a folder on my local disk and copy the files from the SD-Card via the Finder there and after that I can import that Folder to the Insta360 Studio.app? Does anybody understand why I am confused (maybe I think too complicated)?.

 

I don't want to use my iPhone for editing those images and footages when I have a Mac with a big screen...

Just saw your post.

My workflow is:

1. Copy files from the Insta360 microSD card either through a card reader (much faster) or via USB-C through the camera (workable but slower)
2. Open Insta360 Studio App and then “import”, or more correctly, open the files on your drive
3. Make edits and Insta360 Studio will save your non-destructive edits to the *.insv, *.dng, or whatever file you manipulated
4. Export as needed or close Insta360 Studio if you want to come back to editing again later

If you reopen the previously edited files from Insta360 Studio, when you re-import (i.e. re-open) them from you drive, Insta360 Studio will remember your previous edits.

In short, Insta360 saves non-destructive edits as metadata in the files that you imported into Insta360 Studio. It doesn’t keep a catalog or database like Lightroom. The good side is that if you copy the files elsewhere, all those edits you made also gets copied with the file. The bad side is that you can’t easily navigate a large library through Insta360 Studio. You have to re-import them into Insta360 Studio each time you want to view or edit a file and this can take quite a long time for certain workflows like time lapse sequences shot in DNG.