A Christmas present to myself 2023.

Here’s my 1st video using mostly Ace Pro footage. 

Videotaping animals and birds is particularly challenging when using cameras without much optical zoom.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I’d long planned to replace both my old GoPro and my Sony ZV1 camera with one action camera — and finally made the leap when the Insta360 Ace Pro was released December 2023.

My minimum gear for shooting video has never been lighter nor more compact. 

• iPhone 13 Mini
• DJI Mavic Mini S.E. drone and extra batteries
• Insta360 Ace Pro

I can use the Ace Pro with all my GoPro attachments.

Action cameras are even more durable than phones.

Of the dozens of cool features available with the Ace Pro, I’ll actually be using very few for my hiking videos.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Settings

90% of the time I will be shooting:

• 4K 30fps HDR.  Stabilization STANDARD.
• Automatic focus.

I like HDR (high dynamic range) and shoot the same on my iPhone.  Over-saturated video looks good to me on YouTube. Especially if watching on a phone.

4K 30fps is the most I can shoot in HDR on the Ace Pro. (Better would be 60fps in HDR. That would be my #1 request for future upgrade.)

I export at 1080p 30fps so can crop / zoom down without losing resolution. 

Shooting in this setting I can quickly zoom 50% and yet still end up with 4K video whenever I want by double tapping the screen. How does 4K zoom to 4K? … Some sort of digital trickery in camera they call clarity zoom. 

Their 8K is 4K with 4 small pixels replacing each normal 4K pixel. So far I haven’t been much impressed with 8K for video.

Ultrawide gives the widest possible perspective for outdoor scenery. I’ll use that mode when shooting BIG outdoor vistas.

Most of the time, I’ll use Dewarp (minimal distortion) as it most closely matches a normal camera with almost no curvature to the image.

iPhone App and Apple Watch App

I’ll be using the Apple Watch app quite a bit. It’s simple. Quick. And intuitive. 

I might never use the phone app which is complicated. And really not needed for someone who plans to edit video later on laptop.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Photos

Initially, I thought I’d shoot photos on iPhone 13. Video on the Ace Pro.

Comparing different photos on the Ace Pro v iPhone 13, so far I’m MUCH preferring iPhone. Seems Apple does a much better job with photos.

On the other hand, it’s bloody convenient to take a photo simultaneously while videotaping with the new camera.  A great feature of the Ace Pro.

AND I’m thinking it will be more convenient to take selfie photos and video with the Ace Pro on the tripod using Voice Command. 

Voice Command on iPhone seems to screw up a lot for me. I probably won’t use it.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Voice Command on the Ace Pro works most of the time, even in noisy environments.

This camera has Gesture Control — but it works inconsistently, as it does on every other product I’ve tried with that feature.

Downsides of the Insta360 Ace Pro

The AcePro has no GPS.  With iPhone photos and video, I sometimes look up the metadata to see exactly where and when I took the picture — very useful.

It’s possible to use the phone app — or even the watch app — to get the metadata, but that’s too much hassle for me.

The biggest problem now, however, is lack of much zoom on any of my cameras. I’d love to have something with 10x optical, as well. 

Since I export at 30fps, in my normal shooting mode I won’t be able to slow down video. In reality, I don’t use much slow mo anyway, so it probably won’t be a problem. BUT I’ll need to remember to switch to slow motion if I ever want some of those captures.

Still experimenting …