360 c
Another area in the field of cameras that has been gaining a lot of attention lately is 360 cameras. They may immediately conjure up thoughts of virtual reality, bulky headsets and expensive desktop computers to run it all but even 360 cameras have come a long way since their early days just a few short years ago.
I recently purchased a small 360 camera called the Insta 360 One X. At first glance, it may not look like much, but it has some incredibly clever tricks up its sleeve that have led me to believe this tiny thing could very well become an essential tool for journalists in the coming years. Check this short video to learn how to use a 360 camera for journalism.
What makes this camera so interesting is the software that it uses, which is as of this writing still has some amazing features missing. Some features including slow-motion footage and
Here are 5 reasons why you should be using a 360 camera as a journalist.
It captures everything around you
So there is no need to worry about not pointing the camera in the right direction and missing an essential point of view. But what really makes this camera stand out is that you can pick an angle you want from that 360 footage (which is recorded at a whopping 5.7K) you have created and turn it into a conventional HD video.
The camera uses two lenses that’s automatically stitched together to create 360 footage
That stitching ability also creates one of the most amazing features of this camera which is that when you have a monopod attached to it. The stitching erases the monopod from your footage so that it almost looks like you have a cameraman at your side.
You can conduct an interview and record yourself and your subject with a single camera
If you want to conduct an interview and record video of both yourself and your subject you would usually have to bring two cameras if you don’t want to conduct the interview twice. Since 360 cameras have two lenses, you can have one facing yourself while the other face your subject. You then simply edit the 360 footage to make clips from two different angles, one facing yourself and one facing your subject.
READ ALSO – How to improve your social videos to tell compelling stories
You can get drone-like footage in the middle of a crowd during an in other scenarios where flying drones is impractical or forbidden
Using a monopod with the 360 camera can make your footage look like you’re flying a drone rather than just raising a camera a few feet above your head. Drones can be incredibly useful tools when it comes to capturing footage from above but there are plenty of scenarios where flying a drone is either impractical or forbidden because you might be filming in a no-fly zone or in the middle of a crowd. All you have to do in this scenario is to attach your camera to a monopod and extend it as far as you like and you have what looks like drone footage.
The social science context of framing
This is perhaps the most interesting implication of using 360° cameras for journalism.
There are plenty of examples of media outlets often accidentally distorting the coverage of news simply through the way that they choose to depict it, which could have been solved by using a 360 camera.
An excellent recent example of framing gone wrong can be found in news coverage of what appeared to be a group of teenagers wearing “Make America Great Again” hats mocking a Native American elder. Multiple news outlets covered the story and plenty of people came forward to express their outrage over the incident. While the outrage boiled on social media a new video surfaced that showed the incident from a different angle that clearly showed that the incident was much more complicated than people initially thought.
This incident demonstrates that a lot of mistakes that media can make simply by the fact that a camera is pointed in a certain direction can be avoided. And this can be done with a piece of equipment that is significantly smaller than your average smartphone.