This 360 Camera Isn't Terrible

- Hey guys, this is Austin.
360 video is coming, whether you like it or not.
Now sure, you might be used to
standard boring 2D video like this,
but with the Ricoh Theta S,
you have a camera that fits in your pocket
that can shoot full 360 video.
So there are a lot of 360 cameras on the market.
What I like about the Theta is that
not only does it shoot great stills,
at least in theory, but it's small.
Stuff like the Gear 360, while it's a great camera,
only works with a single phone
and it's also a lot harder to carry in your pocket.
So inside the box, the first thing we get is
the actual camera itself.
You know, this kind of reminds me of one of those
old Flip cameras.
Only difference is instead of having one camera,
it actually has two.
So no matter how you hold it,
you're always in one of the camera's view.
So it's got this nice soft touch material
and we have a button up on front
as well as a few things on the side
to turn on and off Wi-Fi,
switch between photo and video mode,
as well as just turning on and off the camera.
On bottom, there's a standard tripod thread
as well as USB and HDMI.
So in theory you can actually do livestreaming
with the Theta; however, you have to plug it in,
probably not going to be super useful.
Inside, it's rocking eight gigabytes of internal memeory,
but there's no microSD expansion.
So that means that, while there's not a ton of space,
especially considering that the stills are only 14 megapixel
and the video is 1080p, you should be able to
get a fair bit onto the camera.
But, before we get too far into that,
we get the wonderful quick start guide,
which does not look quick at all.
And we also have a pouch.
So, since this is a 360 camera,
it actually is important to keep those lenses clean.
Most compact cameras will have some sort
of like lens covering or whatever,
but these are big, really wide-angle cameras.
So actually probably makes sense to keep it in the pouch.
The first step is to download the app.
So that's actually one of the nice things about the Theta,
is that while the Gear 360 only works with
a few modern Samsung phones,
this should in theory work with most everything.
Oh, wow!
That looks like a thing.
Okay, we have video.
So, what do I do here?
Oh, what is that?
Image synthesizing...
Did I just take a 360 photo of myself?
(laughs)
Okay, well,
that's a thing.
That's definitely an amazing shot.
The still looks really nice though.
There's no artifacts or anything.
I'm sure if you look close enough,
you can figure out where it's stitched,
but that actually looks really nice.
Alright, so with the live preview,
I can get a good look of what I'm going to get on the phone,
which is super weird, but when I'm ready,
3...2...1...
(laughs) That's like the greatest shutter noise ever!
So once we actually get it on the phone,
we can just swipe around and see
that's, wow, that's a little bit disturbing.
Whoa, wait hold a second,
so you can zoom it all the way out to a sphere.
Oh, interesting, that's actually really cool.
So honestly, the stills are kind of one of
the cooler parts of this camera.
But, there is a video mode as well.
We should be able to see how amazing the world looks
in full 360 video.
Or how crunchy and low resolution it is.
But probably amazing, right?
Probably? No? Okay.
This doesn't look bad.
I mean, sure, I'm watching it on my phone
and it's only a 1080p image
that's being stretched for the full 360 frame,
but it's pretty much usable here.
Now if you guys want a full 360 video
and to be able to see a bunch of samples from this,
there will be a link in the description over on Facebook,
which actually do a really good job of supporting
the 360 video,
but, at first glance, it's not bad.
So it's one thing to use the Theta in the office,
but the real world test is the real world.
Something I really like about the Theta
is just how portable it is.
So it'll easily fit in a pocket
and when you're ready to actually take a shot,
hit the power button and...
Done.
I'm sure we didn't look like nerds
or anything at all there.
I really appreciate just how quick it is
to be able to transfer stuff and turn on.
So those pictures we just took,
I can pretty much immediately bring out over my phone.
And once it's copied,
there's a little bit of hand action there.
You can see they didn't quite perfectly stitch it.
So one of the things you kind of have to get used to
is maybe holding it just a bit lower.
So with those dual 12 megapixel cameras,
we're getting a 14.4 megapixel stitched file
and it looks really nice, even with the sort of,
I would say pretty harsh dynamic range.
You can see above the building is a little bit blown out,
but honestly this is not bad looking at all.
And, if you really want to sort of
get the exact shot you want,
you have full manual control.
So I might just be sitting on a bench right now,.
However, what I'm actually doing
is recording a 360 video.
So the quality isn't amazing.
So yes, you can be able to kind of look around
and get the full 360 experience,
if you're watching this in 360.
However, the issue is,
is that it's just not that high resolution.
It works, and it's definitely a cool effect,
but honestly, I feel like the stills
look a lot better than the video.
However, it does take some getting used to.
So what I like about the Theta is just
how easy it is to use.
It turns on quickly.
It's easy to snap a quick shot.
And you can transfer it to your smartphone
and see it there
or of course take it to a computer,
edit it, whatever you want to do.
Now, the image quality, I think,
is a lot better than the video quality.
However, if you want to give 360 video a try,
and especially 360 stills,
the Theta is worth a look.
So what do you guys think about 360?
Definitely be sure to let me know what you think
in the comments below
and I will catch you on the next one.

This 360 Camera Isn't Terrible

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