Today I want to talk about this little camera, the Insta360 ONE X, and answer a question I’ve been asking myself for a while and that some of you may be asking too. Is it time to buy a 360 camera for filming weddings, or even commercial work?
I’m going to answer it two ways. First by showing you how I actually used this camera at a wedding I filmed a short while ago, and then by telling you the strengths and weaknesses I found while using it there.
One side note first. I’ve been planning a video about 360 cameras for a long time, and recently Insta360 reached out and said, hey Matt, do you want to try out one of our cameras, and I said yes, that’s perfect, because it lines up exactly with what I’ve been wanting to do. So yes, I did accept this camera for free. I want you to know that before we get into it.
Using 360 For Behind The Scenes
Leading up to the wedding I had all these ideas I’d been sitting on for years about how I could use a 360 camera on a wedding day, and I was finally able to make some of them happen.
The first choice was obvious. I’ve made a lot of behind the scenes videos over the years showing exactly how I film a wedding, and that usually involves hiring and bringing along a third shooter with a third camera to film everything I’m doing. That works great. But I’ve always had the thought: what if I couldn’t hire one? What if it’s a destination wedding, or a last minute wedding, and I still want a BTS but I don’t have a third person?
Well, what if I had a camera wide enough to film literally everything I’m filming and also myself while I film it. A camera like the ONE X.
The Two Accessories That Make It Work
I bought two things to make the ONE X fit my existing setup. First, a tiny camera hot shoe mount so I could sit the Insta360 on top of my camera.
I’ve seen people do this with a GoPro and I’d been wanting to try it, but whenever I thought about it, the only real way to improve on a GoPro is to stop shooting only what’s directly in front and shoot everything, in 360. Pretty cool. And the stabilization on the ONE X is really good, so even handheld everything looks smooth.
The second thing is a dual handle grip for my Zhiyun Crane 2 that comes with an accessory mount, so I could hang the ONE X off the side of the gimbal. Putting it on top with the hot shoe mount plus the battery grip I use on my a7S II would have made the whole thing way too top heavy. That grip also works with a Ronin-S, so if you’re on one of those and you want a dual handle setup, it’s a good option. Heads up: this link goes to the newer DJI RS 5.
Between those two mounts I got a huge amount of versatility and captured a variety of behind the scenes shots I’d never have been able to get in a BTS before. Plus you can zoom in really close on my beard in 360, which is cool.
Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, Matt, are you going to stop hiring a third shooter and just use the 360 camera? No. Definitely not. I fully intend to keep hiring a third shooter, because I really value those extra wide angles you only get from another person. But I can absolutely see myself using the ONE X as another angle to cut to in a BTS, and if I have a destination wedding where I can’t afford to bring somebody, this is a great option.
So that’s one use case. If you want to film a behind the scenes of a wedding or a commercial shoot or basically anything else, tossing a ONE X on a hot shoe or a gimbal or anywhere else you want an ultra wide view of a whole room, I think it’s a great camera for that.
Image Quality
We need a minute on image quality, because I’m sure some of you are wondering whether you could mount this on your main camera and use it as a second angle.
I’d put the ONE X image quality pretty close to an earlier DJI drone or a GoPro from a few generations back. Keep it wide and it looks good. Zoom in and it falls apart quickly. You also won’t get any depth of field out of these small sensors, though honestly in 360 you wouldn’t really want depth of field anyway.
Keep in mind it records 5.7K, which is very impressive for a camera this size. But that high resolution is paired with a 120Mbps bit rate, which is comparatively low for that many pixels, and it shoots H.264. I can’t help feeling that if it recorded H.265, or just used a higher bit rate, it would look much better.
360 is one of the few areas where we genuinely benefit from a massively high resolution camera. 8K, 12K, 16K actually becomes viable whenever you’re shooting something this wide. There are 360 cameras recording at those resolutions already, but they come with a much higher price tag than the $400 of the ONE X.
So to sum up: keep things wide and it should look decent. But I’d hesitate to intercut this footage with my a7S II unless I had a very specific use case.
Bullet Time And A Smoke Bomb
Speaking of specific use cases, this camera has one very cool feature called Bullet Time. Insta360 also sent along a selfie stick that spins, which basically makes your footage look like the Matrix.
My idea was to pair Bullet Time with a colored smoke bomb, the couple spinning the camera overhead while the smoke swirled around them. I think the concept is sound. Both the camera and the environment were working against me.
There was way too much wind on the day before the wedding when we tried it. In an ideal world I’d have set the smoke canister down and hidden, so I wasn’t in the 360 shot, while the smoke built romantically around the couple and the camera spun through it. It was going to look so cool. Instead the wind kept changing direction, so I had to handhold the canister and keep moving to keep the smoke over them, which is why you can see me standing right there in the frame.
I’m confident you’d get much better results on a less windy day. I’d also try it in the shade, because while this camera can remove the selfie stick from the shot, it cannot remove the stick’s shadow, which was very visible in the sun.
Speaking of which, Time To Film Weddings in SUPER 8? is worth a look too.
Where Bullet Time Falls Down
The other thing working against me was the ONE X itself. It doesn’t let you reframe shots taken in Bullet Time mode, so you have to trust that the camera recorded things correctly. The first time I tested it, the camera got it wrong and started flipping the shot and I had no way to correct it. Thankfully I tested before touching the smoke canister, but if you’re in a hurry that’s the kind of thing you miss.
The other issue is that Bullet Time drops the resolution to 3K so it can shoot at 100 frames per second. That frame rate at that size is genuinely impressive for a camera this small, but the bit rate still isn’t high enough, so the image starts to fall apart fast.
Low Light Performance
Which brings me to my last idea. I had this vision of how cool it would look if, as the couple exited their reception with sparklers lighting them on both sides, they held the ONE X up on the selfie stick and got a Bullet Time shot of themselves kissing.
What’s cool is I managed to pull it off. What’s not cool is that the image quality and low light performance made the footage barely usable.
A side note for anyone worried I hogged the exit to myself: I spoke to the photographer beforehand and told her, hey, I’ve got this selfie stick Bullet Time 360 camera thing, is it cool if we try this? She was fine with it, especially because we had the couple go through the exit twice. Once normally, filmed with our real cameras, and then again with the selfie camera. Nothing to worry about. Also the groom was six foot five, and with the stick above his head that’s nearly eight feet, so I wasn’t worried about him hitting anybody. If you’re replicating this at a wedding, do please be safe about it.
I really love the shot and the concept, but the image fell apart once I maxed out the ONE X at ISO 6400. For comparison, the same exit on my a7S II looked great, though that was at f/1.4 and ISO 10,000. It was genuinely dark out there.
So if you’re thinking about a shot like this, don’t let the noise in mine put you off. That was about as dark as wedding exits come. With a brighter exit, more venue lights, the sun still setting, anything more than moonlight and stars, you’ll do better than I did.
So Should You Buy One?
Is it time to buy a 360 camera for weddings or commercial shoots, or are these still a gimmick? It really depends on your use case.
If you have a specific one, like filming behind the scenes where you know you’ll be reaching for it often, I’d definitely recommend picking one up. If you have a smaller concept, a Bullet Time smoke effect or one wedding you want to try it on, I’d rent one rather than spend $400.
I also want to look forward, because if companies like Insta360 keep innovating with higher resolution, better battery, higher bit rates, better low light and maybe bigger sensors, I genuinely question whether I’d ever buy a GoPro or an Osmo Action over something like a ONE X. Heads up: this link goes to the newer DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro. Why settle for filming one angle if you could film all of the angles? Pretty cool concept.
If you want to see how your computer handles editing 360 footage before you commit to anything, that is worth testing first, because the files are a lot heavier than normal video. Leave a comment and let me know if your computer can actually edit them.
And if you’d rather work on the editing side generally, that’s what I teach inside Wedding Film Framework. If you’re a wedding filmmaker who wants to book more couples, there’s a free guide for that too.