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Insta360 One X2 // First time using a 360° camera in the real world! ⛷Getting started & ski b-roll
Come along this in-depth, real-world, getting started guide of the Insta360 One X2 while I use it for the first time under a heavy snowstorm while cross-country skiing! ⛷ This is an in-depth walkthrough and review of the Insta360 One X2 where I explore the different video modes, photography options and film lots of b-roll test footage to decide if this is the best action camera of 2021!? Thanks @insta360 for sending me this camera!
⚡️⚡️ ON SALE (get a free invisible selfie stick!) https://geni.us/insta360-one-x2 OR (10% off + free extra battery) https://geni.us/insta360-one-r
✨ WATCH NEXT ✨
- DJI Pocket 2 Review https://youtu.be/j35Xy3ibRxc
- Shoot stars with your phone https://youtu.be/LwnMOsq0Mpk
- Switching to a NAS https://youtu.be/4JAZyyUrHsU
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#insta360 #insta360onex2 #review
📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - B-Roll intro
00:18 - Introduction
00:50 - Disclaimer
01:13 - Build Quality
01:37 - B-Roll - Walking
01:48 - Shoot first, frame later & audio
02:10 - B-Roll - Skiing
02:22 - Buttons, ports, waterproofing & invisible selfie stick
04:00 - B-Roll - Skiing
04:25 - Video options
06:32 - B-Roll - Timeshift (aka hyperlapse)
06:55 - Weather resistance
07:24 - Resolution, framerates & touch screen
07:57 - B-Roll - Slowmotion
09:10 - Quick record & viewing the footage
10:24 - B-Roll - Skiing
11:22 - Photo options
13:48 - B-Roll - Slo-mo dog!
14:00 - Vlogging
14:31 - Steadycam mode
15:40 - More menu options
17:59 - Final thoughts/Who should buy it!
20:19 - Conclusion - Thanks for watching!
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- My online store: https://store.lbaphotographie.ca
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- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/iu5gau/
📸 GEAR I USE ON YOUTUBE 📸
https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo https://geni.us/dji-pocket-2-combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card https://geni.us/sandisk-extreme-128gb
- Canon 6D Mk https://geni.us/canon-6d-mkii
- Google Pixel 4a https://geni.us/google-pixel-4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM https://geni.us/canon-lens-24-105
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-16-35
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-70-200
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD https://geni.us/vanguard-veo-265cb
- DJI MAVIC AIR https://geni.us/lba-dji-mavic-air
🌍 MY PERSONAL WEBSITE 🌍
#insta360onex2 #insta360 #actioncam
- 0:00 B-Roll intro
- 0:18 Introduction
- 0:50 Disclaimer
- 1:13 Build Quality
- 1:37 B-Roll - Walking
- 1:48 Shoot first, frame later & audio
- 2:10 B-Roll - Skiing
- 2:22 Buttons, ports, waterproofing & invisible selfie stick
- 4:00 B-Roll - Skiing
- 4:25 Video options
- 6:32 B-Roll - Timeshift (aka hyperlapse)
- 6:55 Weather resistance
- 7:24 Resolution, framerates & touch screen
- 7:57 B-Roll - Slowmotion
- 9:10 Quick record & viewing the footage
- 10:24 B-Roll - Skiing
- 11:22 Photo options
- 13:48 B-Roll - Slo-mo dog!
- 14:00 Vlogging
- 14:31 Steadycam mode
- 15:40 More menu options
- 17:59 Final thoughts/Who should buy it!
- 20:19 Conclusion - Thanks for watching!
Good morning everyone! I've always wanted to test [a] 360 degree camera and that's what we're doing today with the Insta360 One X2. This won't be your normal review as my goal is to bring you along so we can both learn together how this camera actually works. Now with the Insta360 One [X2] and my skis ready, let's go into the forest to film some b-roll! For those of you who are new to this channel, I'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at this art. A few weeks ago Insta360 reached down and asked me if I would be interested to make a comparison between their camera and the DJI Pocket 2. They do not get to see this video, they do not get to pay me and they don't even know I'm making this video, so you're getting my full unbiased review of this camera in this video. We will quickly talk about the build quality of this camera. So it's really accurately pretty impressive. The handle is all made of metal which I didn't really expect. I expected it to be made of plastic or something like that. And the camera is actually a lot heavier than i thought, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a good thing because it has a huge battery so that means you're probably getting better performances out of that battery and out of the camera because there's so much tech inside of this small body. The idea with the Insta360 is that you can shoot first and reframe later. This is particularly useful when doing things like right now and we're gonna go for a ski we can just enjoy the activity, film some footage and afterwards decide what is the best firming for your shot. I'm also using the built-in microphone right now so i'm pretty curious to hear if it sounds good or not. I finally got to the trail so let's talk a little bit more about the camera itself. IIf you're coming here, you might be a little bit scared because there's a lot of snow falling right now and you might think it's not waterproof, but it's actually waterproof up to 10 meters so this is not a problem at all being outside. The only big problem is actually the lens is going to get some snowflakes on it. So first thing you can actually buy this little pouch to go on it to protect it when you're not using it. But the most important part is actually to bring with you at the little lens cloth that they gave that comes with the camera and always wipe your lens before taking every shot. Now if you look at the different buttons on here, first we have on the side right here our power button. So if we press it we're gonna see that after a few seconds it's gonna power up and tell us that it's on. Then if we look at the other side right here we have first at the top here a little door and behind the door we have access to our usb-c connection that's for charging and also transferring file if you want. Then if we go now we're just gonna close it, then we go down here, if we take this one out we have the battery here and it's a huge battery so i'm pretty sure it's gonna last pretty long. And one thing I had a hard time finding at the beginning was actually where was the sd card. But yes the card is located right inside of here. So now you know if you're searching for the sd card where it's located. So we're just gonna put back the battery inside to keep the water ceiling. Finally at the bottom here, you have your quarter inch screw and this screws into this invisible selfie stick. And this might seem a little bit silly, but i wasn't sure how to extend the selfie stick at the beginning. I thought we had something to turn or something like that but you actually just pull it and it holds in place perfectly steady. So it's actually really simple to use just pull it, unpull it and that's pretty much it. Now let's quickly talk about the different video modes that are available on the camera because i definitely want to try out the hyperlapse mode that they have because it seems to be pretty cool. So if we come on the camera right here and look at the screen and we swipe up, so this is my understanding up to now is that if we swipe up, right here we have a quickly our different shooting modes we have a picture here, we have video and we have time lapse. Now if we come back to the main menu let's say we select video mode and then we go on the little icon here so if you click on the little video icon here you're gonna have different shooting modes so here we're gonna have standard hdr time lapse time shift and bullet time so i'm not 100 sure what are all these different modes but i guess standard is what i was using up to now which is seem to be the default mode hdr seems to be for high dynamic range but right now i don't really need high dynamic range so i'm not going to test it out for now then time lapse i guess is just a time lapse but i'm not sure if this is the one we need to be using for the hyperlapse but i think what we need to be using us is time shape so this is going to allow to have a hyperlapse with motion blur inside of it and then freeze at time now bullet time i think it's when you turn around you can have a mode where you put it on the top and you turn it around to get a pretty cool effect but we're going to go inside of time shift and now if we go from the left of the menu from the right of the menu here we can swipe and then we have our different uh settings here so we have our exposure our white balance exposure i'm just going to leave everything automatic uh we could also shoot in vivid so we're on vivid color right now we could shoot in log in different settings another thing to note right now is actually that if you go from the bottom here and change your video mode so let's say you go back in standard you're actually going to get more advanced settings here so you can see like if you want to have auto exposure or manual exposure and then you can go through the different options and you might have a few extra options depending on the mode you're selecting so for example i think if we go on hdr we only have access to the white balance because the camera is doing all the rest of the work for you so you can only change the white balance in this case so this is something to keep in mind but yes let's go back inside of time shift and test that out i'm just it right away but it's pretty incredible how good and rugged this camera is it's pretty cold outside right now plus the rain that is falling down i'm completely soaked and the camera seems to have no problem at all i'm a little bit scared of how this was gonna look on the lens but apart from that it seems to be working perfectly fine in this case two pretty important things i forgot to mention is first you can use a little touchscreen here to look around and see what you're framing and this is a big improvement that they brought to the second generation of this camera and the second thing is also that on the bottom here if you click on the image you actually have your different frame rates and resolutions so it usually films at 5.7 k that's the whole image for the 360 degree view but you also have options at 4k and also a 3k at 100 frames per second so 100 frames per second is for slow motion so that's what i'm gonna try out right away um so i think i'm gonna have to call it a day a little bit earlier right now because the conditions are just not good i'm soaked completely and it's pretty cold so yeah i prefer going back home just when i was getting very close to home the snow decided to stop being as awful as was so we're going to continue reviewing this outside so there's a few things i just discovered about the insta360 one x2 and the first one is that you can quickly start recording by long pressing the record button so that's the button in the front here it's gonna open the camera right away start recording so it takes about a few seconds to get started and it's recording right now then when you want to stop you simply press the button and the camera is going to power off automatically so this is pretty useful if you don't have the camera on you just want to quickly start recording start recording without keeping the camera on all the time so if you have the camera on now there's a few other things i want to talk about so first of all is that i forgot to say but you can actually view your footage by swiping from the left here but one thing i realized and was a little bit disappointed is that i realized that if we have some slow motion footage so like right here you can actually not view it on the camera itself you need to go for the app but if you have some 360 footage so just let me swipe here and start playing the 360 footage you can actually look at it and swipe around to see different point of views so this is pretty cool if you want to review your footage pretty quickly on the camera without having to take out the phone to do it if you're enjoying this video please let me know by hitting that like button below and also consider subscribing to get more content on the insta360 photography in filmmaking another pretty neat feature of the insta360 one x2 is that it can also take 360 degree photos not just videos so if you come in our menu in the bottom here and we go and our selections we can actually choose the first mode right here which is for photos and just like for video we have the standard mode we have hdr we have burst mode we have interval and we have night shot interval i'm actually pretty excited to test this one out maybe not today because the conditions are not good but it's going to allow to take raw pictures but with an interval so you're actually going to be able to control that then do a time-lapse or something like that taking high-resolution pictures instead of using only the video but one thing i realized so if we go back in standard mode where we have the most options and then we slide from the right here to access our more advanced settings we're actually going to see first that we have an option so for jpeg plus raw which is pretty good then after if we go on manual mode and we're gonna have a lot more uh settings and if we go on the shutter speed right here we can actually see that we have an option to go up to let me scroll it's going to take a few seconds the shutter speed can be up to 120 seconds so that's a full two minutes of taking a picture so that is pretty great because it's gonna allow especially at night to get much longer shots and much more light inside of this tiny sensor now if you go on daily options you can control the iso the white balance so you have pretty much uh control over your shot then if you come back in our exposure setting another pretty cool thing here is that you have access to otto so i'm living on a2 today because that's my goal is just to test how it works out of the box but if you go manual we just talked about it if you go on iso priority so you can set your iso and the rest is gonna be automatic you can have shutter priority and it has isolated so yeah let's take a few test shots and see how it performs in auto mode automatically actually two things i was just going to forget is first that you have an option to put a timer so if you click on the bottom of the little screen here you're gonna have an option to select a timer so three seconds 5 seconds 10 seconds 15 seconds um so i think that's a good idea to have it on three seconds so you have the time to put it on the pull and take your picture so then there's a little button here that you might miss so by default it is on but if you click on it it's going to say check pure shot effect in the app so i think this is going to add a little bit better editing to the photo once you look at it instead of the app afterwards so before it gets too dark today i want to end the day by talking about uh vlogging using the instax 360 one x2 so this is an important thing for me because i vlog a lot using these types of cameras and i think what is very interesting using this camera is actually that you can see what i'm seeing because i can turn around the camera as i wish and you can also see me and i can change the framing afterwards i can get a tighter shot a wider shot i can control all of this right after taking the video now let's switch to steadicam mode and talk about that mode so i'm now using steadycam mode and cdcam mode allows to replicate what you get with most normal action cameras so you get a super wide angle field of view the only problem i have with this mode is that it maxed out at 1440p which is a huge problem for me because most of the videos coming out instead 360 one x2 is 1080p so that is a little bit higher than what you get normally and a super wide angle field of view it's going to be very useful for me when i'm going to be doing first person uh videos of me taking pictures so i'm pretty excited to test that out and if you're wondering how it compares to the dji pocket 2 that's going to be my next video so be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already so my big question now is how good is the stabilization going to be inside of this mode so i quickly checked some of the footage at the 360 degree view and it seemed to be pretty good but didn't really look at it in detail and for this one i enabled pro mode because it allows to use a computer to apply the stabilization so i guess it should be a little bit better than doing it inside of the camera directly so we're going to see the footage to see if it's actually good or not but i'm pretty sure it's going to be pretty good now let's talk about the other menu options are available on the camera so if we come at the top here and slide down our first gonna see that we have an option for the screen brightness so this one is pretty self-explanatory the second one is to lock the screen and this was actually very useful yesterday when by accident with the snow it was really easy to touch the screen and make things that you didn't want to so by accident i was in photo mode at some point when i was trying to take a video so this is pretty useful and then if we go on the next mode here we're gonna have the led lights on or not and this is very useful because on both sides you have nice led lights right here that allows you to know when the camera is on and if you're recording or not so this is especially useful when it's high on the pull where you cannot really see the screen to know if it's recording or not so you can always look at the lights to know if it's recording then you have if uh quick capture is on so that's what i talked about yesterday where you can simply long press the button and it's going to open the camera start capturing the video and then stop right afterwards then there's a few other options that are pretty cool so the first one here you have air pod support so if you have air pods from apple you can actually link them and use the audio from your airpods i don't have that option so it's not going to work then if you look at the next option here is your audio settings so you can either film the audio from all around so 360 degree audio or you can use the wind reduction i'm on wind reduction and it seems to be working pretty well then you have your voice command so this is actually the one super useful to have on so if you just say to the camera when it's on the stick you can say start recording and here it starts recording and once you're ready to stop you simply say stop recording and it stopped recording there's a few other options for voice control but this is super useful especially when it's on the pull and you don't want to have to touch the camera every time to start and stop recording now we have our other options inside of the more advanced settings so you have general you have bluetooth remote you have auto sleep voice control sd card video encoding so you can either select your 360 degree mode or your city cam mode and the camera information so this is pretty much all the other options you have so there's actually a lot of option already built in inside of the camera one of my thoughts of this insta360 one x2 after using it for just over a day i first thought that 360 degree cameras were kind of a gimmick but after using it i really like it first of all it's very rugged so like we saw yesterday after using it on a very heavy snow that was kind of rain it didn't have any problem at all and was perfectly fine afterwards which is a very important thing for me the second thing is that we have pretty good audio directly out of it so this is actually something i like quite a lot is that you can just use it to vlog or something like that and you know that you're going to be getting pretty good audio without anything additional with it because you cannot plug in a microphone or something like that it's also very easy to use but there's a lot of options in the menu so it might be a little bit complicated when starting but once you understand what are all these options it's actually really easy to go through all the menus and change your settings as you wish another really great thing is that during winter they have big buttons all around the camera so it's really easy to press on them even if you have gloves or things like that uh on your hand while manipulating the camera there's also a pretty good battery life so it lasted for about like two three hours yesterday um and i filmed about like an hour of footage so that's pretty good and it was also pretty cool that yesterday and had no problem at all during the cold weather which is probably some of my other cameras where the lens freezes or something like that this had no problem at all with the cool weather it's also very cool because you can get some super unique shots with this camera that you simply cannot get with any other cameras and then with a selfie stick you can really just point it wherever you want whether it's higher lower or things like that and get some completely different shots that you're not used to seeing and this is great because i'll use to be more creative in the end now not everything is perfect about this camera there's two things that frustrate me just a little bit the first one is that you need to go through the app for a lot of things so some of the footage you simply cannot review it on the camera directly you need to open the app just to be able to review the footage so i would like if they could fix that and so we can see all the footage directly on the camera to quickly know if the shot is good or not the second thing is that there's so many options that can be kind of complicated to understand where are all the options and some of those modes actually have more settings that are hidden away so it's just a thing that you need to learn all the different options that are possible on camera so i highly suggest you go through all the different options of the camera and try to understand all the menus before using it to not lose time when you're in the field and don't really understand how to change the different setting on the camera this is an easy camera to recommend especially if you're doing action sports or you just want to get more creative shots if you enjoyed this video please let me know by hitting the like button below and also consider subscribing my next video is going to be a comparison of the DJI Pocket 2 and the video after that is going to go through a more creative techniques including the ai modes that this camera has built in so see you in the next one bye bye
Video Links
- ⚡️⚡️ ON SALE (get a free invisible selfie stick!) OR (10% off + free extra battery) https://geni.us/insta360-one-r
- DJI Pocket 2 Review
- Shoot stars with your phone
- Switching to a NAS
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- TikTok
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
- http://bit.ly/loicba
What is this video about?
I've always wanted to test a 360-degree camera, and today I'm finally doing it with the Insta360 One X2. This isn't your typical review—my goal is to bring you along on the learning journey as we discover together how this camera actually works in the real world.
I took the camera out into the forest with my skis, and I'll be honest: the conditions were rough. Heavy snow, cold weather, and constant moisture falling from the sky. But that's exactly when you learn whether a camera is built to last. The build quality impressed me right away—the metal handle, the weight, and the substantial battery inside all suggested this was designed for serious use, not just casual vlogging.
One of the biggest advantages of the One X2 is that you can shoot first and frame later. Since it captures 360 degrees, you can just enjoy whatever activity you're doing and reframe your shots in post-production. While skiing, I could focus on the terrain and let the camera capture everything around me.
I explored the different shooting modes: standard video, HDR, time-lapse, time-shift (hyperlapse), and bullet time. The time-shift mode was particularly interesting—it gives you motion blur with hyperlapse, which creates a really dynamic effect. The camera also shoots at 5.7K for the full 360 view, though you can step down to 4K or 3K at 100fps for slow motion. The touchscreen is a major upgrade from the first generation; it lets you preview framing in real-time.
Beyond video, the camera has impressive photo capabilities with manual controls that include shutter speeds up to 120 seconds, ISO adjustments, and white balance control. You can also do interval shooting in raw, which opens up creative possibilities.
The steadicam mode replicates what you'd get from a traditional action camera—a super-wide field of view at up to 1440p. The voice control is genuinely useful: just say "start recording" and "stop recording," which is perfect when the camera is mounted on the selfie stick or you're wearing gloves.
What I loved: the rugged build, the good audio captured directly, the battery life (lasted through a full day of heavy use), and how it handled the cold weather without any issues. The unique shots you can get with 360 capture are genuinely creative and different from anything else.
What frustrated me: some footage requires the app to review rather than the camera itself, and the menus have a lot of hidden options that take time to fully understand. But once you learn your way around, it's straightforward to use.
If you're doing action sports or want to push your creativity with camera angles, this is easy to recommend. My next video will compare the One X2 with the DJI Pocket 2, and after that I'll dive into some of the AI modes and more creative techniques this camera offers.