Top 5 360 Degree Action Cameras 2022 | Articles | Photo, video, optics

360° cam­eras with a unique per­spec­tive help you see the world around you in a new way, as well as diver­si­fy your video con­tent.

Com­pa­nies are con­stant­ly work­ing on the per­for­mance of cam­eras, pump­ing their char­ac­ter­is­tics: high­er res­o­lu­tion, reli­able sta­bi­liza­tion, and improv­ing optics and soft­ware.

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In this arti­cle, we will tell you what to look for when choos­ing a 360° cam­era, how they work, and also rec­om­mend you some good options.

Why you need a 360° cam­era
Who needs a 360° action cam­era
Top 5 360° cam­eras
What to look for when choos­ing a 360° cam­era

Why you need a 360° camera

Most 360° cam­eras have two or more wide-angle lens­es that cap­ture a 360-degree video sphere from which you can then select any angle and edit it as a 2D video.

This requires spe­cial soft­ware, which is pro­vid­ed by each man­u­fac­tur­er. Although it’s a bit more com­pli­cat­ed than shoot­ing reg­u­lar videos, you get the abil­i­ty to cap­ture every­thing around you, choose the most inter­est­ing angle, switch from one angle to anoth­er, and select dif­fer­ent parts of the video sphere to sim­u­late cam­era move­ment.

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Who needs a 360° action camera

It is espe­cial­ly use­ful for those involved in active sports — the 360 ​​° cam­era can record the action itself, and your face and body at the same time. What could be cool­er than watch­ing the world move around snow­board­ers, sky­divers or motocrossers!

Such a cam­era will be a great helper in cre­at­ing a fam­i­ly pho­to archive — attach a 360° cam­era to a mono­pod and shoot fam­i­ly cel­e­bra­tions and hol­i­days in large com­pa­nies.

And the most prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion — the 360 ​​° cam­era is very use­ful for real­tors and those who plan to pur­chase real estate. Vir­tu­al 3D tours of apart­ments are not uncom­mon today. Being able to “walk around” a poten­tial new home online will save time for both par­ties.

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So, below are some of the best 360° cam­eras avail­able. Each of them has its own advan­tages.

Insta360 ONE X2 Pocket Camera 351421

fotosklad.ru

The Ins­ta 360 ONE X2 cam­era has two lens­es: the first one is in 4K res­o­lu­tion and the sec­ond one is in 5.7K res­o­lu­tion. Four noise-can­cel­ing micro­phones are built into the cam­era, as well as Flow State sta­bi­liza­tion — an algo­rithm inside the cam­era imi­tates the move­ments of a gim­bal, result­ing in smooth footage with excel­lent sound.

Of the pleas­ant bonus­es: Aqua Vision mode pro­vides for shoot­ing under­wa­ter. You can also take a still pic­ture while shoot­ing a video with just one touch.

• Movie for­mats: FHD, 2K, 4K, 5.7K
• 4K and 5.7K lens­es
• Updat­ed core and proces­sor
• Sta­bi­liza­tion
• Clear sound, noise reduc­tion
• Bat­tery with 21% more capac­i­ty
• Full charge in 85 min­utes
• Water­proof

Ricoh Theta X 360 Degree 2.25″ Touchscreen Spherical Camera

Amazon.com

Ricoh Theta X 360 is an advanced mod­el in the Theta series. Thanks to the touch screen, you can eas­i­ly switch between dif­fer­ent shoot­ing modes, view images, start and stop record­ing — all with­out the need to con­nect to a smart­phone. You can also mark the received frames as favorites in the image list, and then view them through the Theta appli­ca­tion on your smart­phone.

Bonus points: AI Auto, which uses facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy to iden­ti­fy objects in images, and built-in image sta­bi­liza­tion smooths out hand tremors.

• 7K video with sta­bi­liza­tion
• Reli­able pho­to mode in low light
• Auto HDR
• Abil­i­ty to set white bal­ance and expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion before live stream­ing
• Excel­lent 2.25″ dis­play

Labpano Pilot One Smart 8K 360 Degree VR Camera

Amazon.com

Pilot One is the small­est 8K 360-degree smart cam­era on the mar­ket.

Smart touch screen 2.0. Lab­pano intro­duced the rev­o­lu­tion­ary smart touch screen on its first flag­ship Pilot Era device, which for the first time made it pos­si­ble to shoot, edit and share con­tent with­out using a smart­phone or PC. The smart 2.0 touch­screen on Pilot One pro­vides even eas­i­er, smoother and faster con­trol.

sta­ble sta­bi­liza­tion. Pilot One is the world’s first 360-degree cam­era that per­forms real-time sta­bi­liza­tion thanks to an intel­li­gent shake com­pen­sa­tion algo­rithm and a built-in 9‑axis gyro­scope.

Easy cap­ture of street view. With GPS sup­port and a pow­er­ful proces­sor, the cam­era gen­er­ates high-qual­i­ty 8K images at up to 7 frames per sec­ond.

The body of the Pilot One is made from alu­minum alloy for strength and dura­bil­i­ty. It also fea­tures an IP65 water­proof design, so it can eas­i­ly with­stand harsh out­door envi­ron­ments.

• High Def­i­n­i­tion 8K
• 2 inch touch screen
• 6 micro­phones
• Soft­ware for cre­at­ing vir­tu­al tours
• 128 GB of stor­age to store up to 3600 8K pho­tos or 14400 4K pho­tos
• Sta­bi­liza­tion with 9‑axis gyro­scope
• Built-in 3400mAh bat­tery 2 hours con­tin­u­ous 8K shoot­ing or live stream­ing
• Inter­nal air­flow cool­ing pro­vid­ing ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture up to 45 degrees

GoPro MAX 360 Action Camera

Amazon.com

GoPro is prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar name in action cam­eras. The GoPro Max 360 cam­era has been resized and shaped slight­ly to accom­mo­date two wide-angle lens­es, one on each side of the cam­era. It can shoot 360-degree video at 5.6K30, HERO video at up to 1440p60, and live stream at 1080p. As for pho­tos, the Max can take 360-degree pho­tos at 16.6 MP.

The GoPro Max has sim­i­lar inter­nal fea­tures to the GoPro HERO 8: pho­to timer, voice con­trol, GPS, motion sen­sors, scene detec­tion, and Hyper­Smooth to help elim­i­nate jit­ter and shake. How­ev­er, the Hyper­Smooth GoPro Max is even more impres­sive using 180° cap­ture, cre­at­ing the most advanced GoPro sta­bi­liza­tion yet.

The Max cam­era also has unique fea­tures. Hori­zon Lev­el­ing is Hori­zon Lev­el­ing, which allows you to cap­ture smooth, smooth cin­e­mat­ic footage. Func­tion Pow­er­Pano helps you cre­ate dis­tor­tion-free panoram­ic pho­tos with a 270° field of view.

• Rugged and water­proof hous­ing up to 4.8m
• Motion time-lapse func­tion
• Ultra-smooth sta­bi­liza­tion
• 6 micro­phones
• Voice con­trol
• Mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal lens options

Matterport Pro2 134MP Professional Capture 3D Camera

Amazon.com

The Mat­ter­port Pro2 is a pro­fes­sion­al 3D cam­era ide­al for cap­tur­ing homes, res­i­den­tial areas, large com­mer­cial spaces and build­ings. High res­o­lu­tion and 134.2 megapix­els pro­vide high qual­i­ty 3D shoot­ing and dimen­sion­al accu­ra­cy.

The device is suit­able for sur­vey­ing both sim­ple res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties and large com­plex com­mer­cial premis­es — users can cre­ate accu­rate schemat­ic floor plans. Pro2 com­bines detail and speed, and deliv­ers dimen­sion­al accu­ra­cy and high image qual­i­ty. You can cre­ate 4K OBJ, XYZ, JPG and PDF files.

File shar­ing. You can trans­fer the received frames to any device, share them on social net­works, send them by e‑mail, pub­lish them on Google Street View. So, you will be able to improve col­lab­o­ra­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, as well as increase inter­ac­tion with cus­tomers.

The cam­era is equipped with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The Cor­tex AI plat­form is a pow­er­ful neur­al net­work that cre­ates a 3D dig­i­tal image. Cor­tex han­dles the most com­plex tasks from 3D recon­struc­tion, imag­ing and col­or grad­ing to label­ing rooms and objects in each room.

This is a tool for peo­ple who want to pro­fes­sion­al­ly approach the per­for­mance of work tasks.

The cam­era does not shoot video, there­fore it is a cam­era designed for tak­ing vir­tu­al tours. As a bonus: auto­mat­ic face blur­ring for pri­va­cy.

• Pro­fes­sion­al image qual­i­ty
• Shar­ing files on social net­works
• Equip­ment with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence
• Schemat­ic floor plans
• Qual­i­ty of print-ready images

How to choose a 360° camera?

There are sev­er­al fac­tors to con­sid­er when look­ing for a 360° cam­era, name­ly:

• image qual­i­ty,
• ease of use,
• sta­bi­liza­tion.

Image qual­i­ty is sub­jec­tive. Some may like bright and sat­u­rat­ed col­ors. And some­one plans to active­ly edit the result­ing mate­r­i­al, so they will need to make the frames more nat­ur­al, because it is eas­i­er to work with the image.

For ease of use, most 360° cam­eras now have soft­ware inte­grat­ed. As a rule, all man­u­fac­tur­ers make soft­ware intu­itive.

The next fea­ture to con­sid­er is sta­bi­liza­tion. Despite the fact that many 360-degree cam­eras already have some sta­bi­liza­tion, there is no lim­it to per­fec­tion. The best 360° cam­eras will make your footage even smoother, so your videos will look more pro­fes­sion­al.

In custody

360° cam­eras offer a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to share your world with an audi­ence. Whether you want to show off your crazy skate­board tricks, a live con­cert, cap­ture an apart­ment and use the pho­tos to sell, or any­thing else, the 360° cam­era will immerse the view­er in the place you show them. Many of these cam­eras are sold at fair­ly rea­son­able prices, so it’s def­i­nite­ly worth get­ting one and get­ting cre­ative with your work tasks.

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