360 camera experience — pros, cons and tips — Fellowship in Poland
With Outriders I was filming interviews with migrants using 360 degree camera — Samsung Gear 360 (2017), which is really small, light, user-friendly and cool. So you could understand better, camera sees everything, because it has two lenses and it films top, bottom, front and back, left and right sides, so If you want to shoot something you have to hide, otherwise you would be on the picture.
Firstly I really liked this camera, because the quality of picture was really good. To use camera you should connect it with your phone (Android or iOS) via WiFi. Using you phone you can control camera, change modes and see what is going on in front and back of camera (which is really important as soon as you have to hide somewhere). Program stitch two pictures for you, the stitch seam is almost invisible. BUT as soon as I used my iPhone 6s I had some troubles.
Unfortunately Medium doesn´t support 360 view so you can´t see the 360 effect but I would post the picture anyway.
Even though my iPhone is not so old and updated, the connection via WiFi was really unstable and sometimes I was restarting camera 10 times for 40 min to shoot something. In Internet I read that only iPhones 6s have those troubles. The good news is that you can push the red button on the camera and start filming immediately. Bad news is that you have two modes — photo and video. So if you need the video, but last time you have used photo mode then when you push the red button you will take a picture with you on it.
So my advice — use another iPhone or Android phone.
Also the disadvantage of this camera is that in video mode you don´t have the preview. So you set up camera and can look through the scene but when you start filming the only thing that you see on the phone is black screen and time. The advantage is that you can film and use other apps on the phone at the same time.
Another my advice — take power bank. The phone and camera are dying really fast during work. Max 1 hour of active use.
Tips about filming — you have to provide really good lighting because otherwise the quality of video will go down. Eventhough my videos were in full HD the picture was not so good when I started to watch it on the computer.
For editing videos there is a special software from Samsung — Gear 360 ActionDirector, the key for program is added. But unfortunately a lot of users have problems using the software, I also had them. It took 3 days to understand why it is not working and how we can fix it. But we made it. We reinstalled the program and installed both installation setups — one from Samsung and another from Cyberlink. Then it worked out.
To sum up, I would say that I would continue to use this camera. If you want to make an innovative story this camera is really good. It is really light, doesn´t take up much space and the price is really friendly.
