Donovan Fourie from The Bike Show shares his thoughts on the pretty amazing Insta 360 X3 camera… For bloggers, you-tubers and TV producers…
As friends are beginning to discover, filming a weekly motorcycle tv show isn’t all just riding motorcycles and fun. A lot of it is, obviously, but not everything.
The rest is work, mostly consisting of U-turns – ride past the camera, make a U-turn. Wait for the cameraperson to reset, ride past again and U-turn. Ride past and U-turn. U-turn. U-turn. U-turn. U-turn.
I’m getting quite good at U-turns.
And then move to another location and do the same. Then add shooting bike details, B-roll, pieces to camera, drone shots and then finally, on-boards. Many of them.
A full-length motorcycle road test takes at least a day to film. Often, two.
The ability to get good shots is paramount, but getting these shots in a timely manner is a close second priority.
This is why we love our two Insta360 cameras. They are roughly the same price as the latest GoPro, have the option of one of the best motorcycle mountain kits I have ever had the pleasure of working with and act like multiple GoPros with every shot.
Take this setup that we use often for example – one Insta on the handlebars directly in front of the rider, and another mounted on a passenger grab-rail at the back of the motorcycle. From that, the front camera picks up a shot of the rider, a shot of the scene in front of the motorcycle, the cockpit, the dash, the left handlebar, the right handlebar and perhaps a panning shot of another bike coming past.
The back camera picks up a shot of the motorcycle and rider from the rear, a shot of the rear wheel in motion, scenery the bike is riding past, more panning shots of riders going past and a shot facing backwards to pick up any bikes riding behind you.
That’s 13 shots in one take. To accomplish that with, lets say, a GoPro, we would need either 13 GoPros and a comprehensive inventory of different mounts, or some more hours in the day.
And the quality is really, really good.
We are very happy with our two Insta 360s.
