First experience with Nikon KeyMission 360
A few days ago I published my first ever video made with Nikon KeyMission 360 camera.
The title Day at Manea Pit suggests it was all done in one day. In fact, I was there five times.
I didn’t use anything from the shots made on the first evening — they were too dark. I was filming the sunset at last three times, and I’m not happy with any of them — mostly because of time lapse functionality. One day I come there during the lunch break. I wanted to film not only different day parts but also different weather. However, the shots during the rain were not very successful.
In the end, I somehow ended up with both too much and too little material at the same time.
The light reflection destroyed few shots. It looks like the sun needs to be directly on the front of one of the lenses or exactly on the stitching line. 10–15 degrees off produce reflections which ruin everything.
I’m generally happy with the sound. I did all shots with noise correction switched on. However, all shots done on the very windy day become useless because of loud noise, so this option is not as good as expected.
The most frustrating was the time lapse and supper lapse functionality. A big part of the problem is, of course, the flaky communication between the phone and the camera. Once you change the setting, you cannot be sure if you will be able to change it back quickly.
I still also don’t understand supper lapse mode even after consulting the user manual. To me, it is like time lapse, but it makes your video blurry, but probably I’m missing something.
The time lapse seems more reliable. It only will be nice if the app will tell us how many seconds of video we will be produced from each minute of filming. It is possible to do it in the head, but it is not very straightforward.
One of the mistakes I was able to spot only after making the whole video. I mixed up front and back lenses. This will require the user to turn 180 degrees to see something interesting in one of the scenes. It is possible to fix it in post production with some paid tools, but unfortunately, I don’t have any of them.
It hope KeyMission desktop application could do it.
In general, I was not using the phone app for starting and ending recording. The communication is flaky, and it is much easier to press a button on the camera. It means I was not changing any settings most of the time. If I will use exposure compensation on the first day, I will probably get much better results. But, without some form of the preview, it will be not possible to choose it anyway. Small display and menu options on the camera body, like in some other makes, will not help here much.
I only hope coming phone, and camera software updates will fix communication problems soon.
I don’t think anyone ever mentions it in any review, but the phone app drains the phone battery very quickly. This may happen even when away from the camera and without starting the app.
Not a big problem in itself but I was unpleasant surprised when my alarm clock didn’t work one day.
Both camera and my skills could improve. In the end, I’m happy with my first results and hope to get better soon.
