Insta360 has traveled to CES 2017 in Las Vegas to announce their Insta360 Pro, which is their professional VR camera, that is able to shoot in 8K resolution. This is a big deal because when it comes to 360-degree cameras, the more resolution the better, due to the fact that the picture is much larger. Unlike the Insta360 Air camera, which is a clip-on camera for your smartphone, the Insta360 Pro is a standalone camera. Insta360 notes that it “offers a powerful VR imaging system for professional photo and video creators as well as non-professionals who demand excellence from the camera they use to pursue their creative visions.”
There are 6 independent lenses available on the Insta360 Pro, which is what gives you crisp, 8K resolution. The photographers out there, we’re looking at 60-megapixel, 360-degree stills. It does support HDR as well as RAW formats, so you can take photos without any post-processing and edit the pictures yourself in your favorite photo editor. For those that would rather record in 4K, you do have the option of up to 100 frames-per-second, which makes for some pretty smooth video, definitely useful for virtual reality. There is also a VR time-lapse mode that will give a new dimension to videos and there is also a live preview function. This let’s the user get the best angle before snapping the photo or pressing record.
Insta360 Pro offers high-performance real-time image stitching. It also offers H.264 and H.265 video compression, and that keeps the video resolution and quality high, while shrinking the file of the video. Users can also use Insta360 Studio to auto-stitch image files together. Insta360 says that they are using the same 3D capturing capabilities as Hollywood films, which means you are getting some pretty high-quality video here. You have the ability to record 3D videos in up to 6K resolution. As far as pricing and availability goes for the Insta360 Pro, it’ll be available “later this year”. The company is being pretty vague about when it’ll be available, and this is likely because they haven’t started mass producing it just yet. Pricing of the Insta360 Pro is looking pretty steep, coming in at $3,000 USD. It’ll be available on Amazon and Insta360’s official online store when it does become available.
