Samsung - Gear 360 Video Camera - white

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• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Great 360 Camera, quality needs work

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  After doing research on all the 'lower cost' 360 cameras, I constant came to the conclusion that the Gear 360 is the best 360 camera on the market currently. It's a bit tough to find in stock and had a slight issue with the first one, but after getting it replaced the second one was great. I took it with me to Las Vegas, Nellis AFB Airshow, and Disneyland and put it through a through a few hundreds shots and a few videos. This allowed me to really get a feel for the various aspects of this first effort by Samsung. Photos - As someone who used to do the manual way of taking 20 shots with my phone to make a photosphere, this instant way of taking a 360 photo was perfect. No weird 'half human' stitches from people walking between shots. The photos are stitched well as long as the nearest subject is at least about a foot away from either lens. Putting the brightest light source (like the sun) pointing at the area between the lenses helps to give really nice consistent stitching. The quality, however, is not as high res as you might imagine. While it's better quality than any of the other 360 cameras out there, it looks like a 'medium' res camera took the photo. If you bump up the ISO limit to anything above ISO 800, the image becomes soft, noisy, and looks terrible in the Samsung VR system. Keeping the ISO at 400 makes for sharper and clearer photos, but still not like what the newer smart phones can get quality wise. I was surprised at how non detailed some of the photos could be, especially at night. They are acceptable for viewing in VR, providing you keep the ISO limit low and don't move the camera. But don't expect the quality to be better than a photosphere. Video - Video is said to be 4k, but keep in mind that's 4k when stitched together, NOT per lens. The quality is again decent, but if something is moving fast (a USAF Thunderbird fighter jet flying past at near Mach speeds) you won't see smooth high res motion, but a little more jumpy motion. Night video isn't that great, so you have to bump the ISO limit up for there to be enough light (like at Disneyland at night), and that will introduce noise into the video. At the highest ISO, it can look like the dark sky has the old fashioned TV noise when you flip to a channel that isn't broadcasting. Also, the videos are split into multiple smaller files and can take a really long time to transfer to the phone. However previewing the videos on the phone (without downloading them) is really fast. Phone App - The phone app is pretty simple, and can be slow to respond when trying to connect to the 360. Keep in mind that the 360 DOES NOT stitch the images/videos in camera, your PHONE does all that. I believe only Samsung S6, S7, and S7 Edge phones are compatable (could be more Samsung phones) but there are ways to sideload the app on other phones and get it mostly working. The App is slow to download the images and videos because it has to download them then stitch them. If you have 50 images you want to stitch and a few videos, it could take a few hours to all get done. The app could really use some improvement. That being said, I find it easier to change the limited camera settings (ISO, exposure value, quality/size, white balance, etc) with the app, but it's not something you can do super quickly. I will say that the HDR setting doesn't seem to do anything noticeable for the photos. Build Quality - The camera seems pretty fragile overall, you will NOT want to drop it. Water, dust, dirt, etc are no issue... but the glass bubble lenses are super easy to scratch/chip with even the slightest fall I've been reading... and it's expensive to replace them (if Samsung even will at all!) I wish there was some sort of screen protector I could put on the lenses to protect them. Make sure you keep a cleaning cloth with the 360 as you will want to make sure the lenses are always clean as that can produce weird lens flares. Battery - The battery is small, so if you're using it heavily you will run out of battery within a few hours. BUT, there's an issue with the 360 overheating before you even would reach the end of the battery's life. If it's hot out the camera can easily overheat and it will flash a warning and stop any video recording/photo taking and will force you to wait till the battery cools down. You can pop out the battery and fan/blow on it to cool it down, but this is a major issue. The bad/good news is that all the other 360 cameras out there do this too, so it's something you'll have to live with. I find that if you just turn off the camera in between shots, that helps a lot. BUT, if it does start to over heat, you'll run into another problem that only seems to happen to this camera: 'Blurgate' - As reported on a 360 forum (and as I've seen myself), as the camera begins to overheat, the battery slightly bulges in size. This causes what seems like a very slight movement of the lenses making the camera go slightly out of focus. I've seen this happen myself. It's not blurry to the point you can't use it, but you will notice a suddenly lack of sharpness and detail. Once the camera cools down again, all is back to normal. This seems to be because of the fixed focus on the lenses being a bit too precise. This hasn't been addressed by samsung at the time I'm writing this review (12/2/16), so hopefully either there's an update to help this or the next release fixes this major issue. Again, making sure to turn off the camera in between shots/videos helps keep the camera cool, and in turn keeps the blurgate under control. Accessories - The 360 comes with the battery, a USB cable, a mini tripod (you'll want to invest in a monopod/selfie stick to avoid the 'fat fingers' from holding the tiny tripod), and a nice draw-string carrying pouch. There is an optional accessories pack that includes a remote control, various types of mounts for the 360, and a longer tripod. Overall - It's a great start to what will hopefully only get better. As the whole VR fad continues to get more and more popular, I think 360 cameras will be seen more and more. Right now, everyone stares at my 360 like it's some alien device and are very interested in what it is... but I think we'll see more people with them in the future. If you want to jump on the start of 360 photos and videos, this is a great one to start with having the best quality and stitching time... just make sure you have a Samsung phone. If you're looking to record a concert, show, etc. you might want to wait a year or so as it's not quite there yet. For the casual person who wants 360 mementos from vacations, trips, etc this is the perfect gadget for that.

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  Posted 9 years ago by WarbirdPhotog

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  360 Degrees of Adoration

  • Incentivized

  Late last year, Samsung announced their arrival in the burgeoning virtual reality space with the launch of the Gear VR headset, bringing premium mobile virtual reality to the masses and firmly establishing itself as a front-runner in the market. In the subsequent months, the South Korean electronics giant worked hard to promote the Gear VR experience with promotional campaigns, product bundles and an improved second iteration. However, as the Samsung brand became synonymous with VR mobile content consumption, VR content creators had to endure a frustrating wait for news of an accompanying 360 camera. Finally, towards the tail end of the non-committal ‘Summer 2016’ release date, and nearly four months after the device was launched in Korea and Japan (a lifetime in this day and age of global simultaneous products launches), the hotly-anticipated device has finally begun to hit US store shelves. Samsung hopes the promise of 4K 30fps video capture, seamless integration with their line of Galaxy phones and a competitive price point will persuade prospective early adopters that the Gear 360 was worth the wait FORM FACTOR Roughly the size of a pool ball and accompanied by a miniature tripod, cleaning cloth and carry-case, the Gear 360 is about as portable as an extraneous 4K video capture device could possibly be. With this portability, however, comes a passable-at-best 1,350mAh battery; though thankfully the battery is removable, as are the MicroSD cards used for storage. Whilst the miniature tripod enhances the Gear 360’s portability, its actual practicality as a tripod is fairly limited. In fact, it works better as a stand than a tripod. Thankfully, Gear 360 features an industry-standard tripod attachment screw, meaning that owners can use any existing action camera mounts and full-sized tripods with the device. Despite being clearly the camera’s key-selling point, Gear 360 isn’t restricted solely to standard spherical video capture; Looping Video is an option (after all, this is the Vine-generation) as are spherical photographic stills and time lapses - a medium that lends itself extremely well to VR. Furthermore, the added ability to record video and photographs with a single ultra-wide fisheye lens will convince many users that the Gear 360 can replace their GoPro altogether. APP SUPPORT With smartphone app support out of the box, Samsung devotees will instantly feel at home with a UI that mimics the Galaxy’s standard camera app. The ability to view the 360 video feed, stitched together in real-time really helps the Gear 360 stand out. Users can rotate and zoom both the live camera feed, or recorded videos, all streamed directly from the device. The experience is utterly seamless, and perhaps this desire for perfection is the reason Samsung decreed that app-support is only available to Galaxy S6 and later smartphones. Away from the app, all the action can be controlled via buttons on the body of the camera, with a mini screen on the top of the device giving the user just enough information to get by. Should the smartphone app’s editing tools feel too restrictive, Samsung have also bundled desktop software in the shape of Cyberlink’s ActionDirector. Strangely, due to the lack of glossy instructional material, it almost feels like an afterthought; just a scrap of paper in amongst the packaging containing the words ‘ACTION DIRECTOR’ and a string of alpha-numeric characters. ActionDirector’s basic toolset includes the ability to modify lighting, contrast and other basic visual effects, together with the option to add text to spherical videos. While features are few and far between, the functionality on offer is easy-to-user and self-explanatory. Cyberlink have a reputation for class-leading video editing software, so it’s great to see bundled software from a reputable company, rather than self-produced software – a mistake that which has let down many an accomplished product over the years. CONCLUSION As a Kodak PixPro SP360 4K Dual Pro Pack camera owner, I had already experienced the fledgling VR camera market’s previous front-runner. While Gear 360 matches the PixPro’s dual camera 4K resolution, it does so in a compact, single camera solution, fully controllable with a smartphone app, with vastly superior desktop software and for $550 less than Kodak's asking price. Simply put; with the Gear 360, Samsung have created the single finest 360 camera on the market. Not bad for a first try.

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  Posted 9 years ago by CTIGUK

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Essential camera for virtual reality!

  • Incentivized

  I’ve been using the Gear360 for about a month and I absolutely love it. It’s very fun to capture 360 selfies and amazing landscape photos, and is a must buy for virtual reality users. Pros: - Attention grabbing, futuristic design - Easy controls that can act independent of your phone - Great resolution for photos, good enough resolution for video - Very good sound capture, even live bands sound great! - Included desktop software is straightforward and easy to edit videos/post online - Light editing can be done on your phone - Compatible with standard camera equipment/memory cards Cons: - Doesn't handle low light situations very well (though I haven't played much with the settings, but still my late night indoor videos look like the resolution was cut in half) - Bulky shape makes it impossible to carry in your pocket, so save space in a bag - Can't connect your phone unless in an area with wifi, I wanted to change a setting on a campout and had to wait until I found a building with wifi just to adjust the countdown timer - There isn't a simple way to view your images in the Samsung GearVR, while you can click an image within the Gear360 App to "view in VR" and then insert the phone into your headset, you get launched into a VR photo gallery that amazingly doesn't recognize 360 photos, if you can find your Gear360 photos in the file system you'll see them as rectangular projections, not 360. So I ended up using the "Samsung VR" app (formerly Milk VR) and there you can view the photos and select the proper 360 mode. Describing the pros and cons don't do this device justice because there is something magical about viewing your own photos and videos inVR that is so much more compelling than standard cell phone pics. This feels like you're stepping into a memory. This really impacted me as I took pictures of my home and town as I prepared to move and now I can look back at those and feel like I'm there. I'd recommend this device to anyone ambitious to try new tech and doesn't mind learning some new software. It is a must buy for all Samsung GearVR owners and hopefully software to interface with the photos in VR will continue to improve.

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  Posted 9 years ago by slimjimbeam