Back in January, Insta360 announced Titan, its behemoth 11K 360º camera, and is now ready to start taking orders.
If you're unfamiliar with the Titan, it's a revamp of Insta360's entire system, with upgrades to not only resolution but its sensors and low-light sensitivity as well. It boasts 11K at 30 fps, 10K 3D, 10-bit recording, 100-6400 ISO, and 8 micro 4/3 sensors, the largest offered in a unibody VR camera.
The Titan can automatically stitch a 2D image in-camera up to a 10560 x 5280 image and in 3D can stitch up to 9600 x 9600. There's also a bespoke monitoring system from Insta360 called Farsight that allows you to take a look at what sort of 360/VR images are being recorded.
And now, we can finally get our hands on all that.
Tech Specs:
- 11K 360º VR Camera
- 8x 200º f3.2 lenses
- 8x micro four-thirds sensors
- Shooting options range from 11K/30p to 5.3K/120p
- i-Log available
- In-camera HDR
- 10-bit
- .MP4 at h.264/h.265
- .MOV at ProRes 422 HQ (if stitching in post)
- Up to 180mbps
- Built-in 9-axis FlowState gyroscopic stabilization
- ISO 100-6400
- 12 stops of dynamic range
- 4 ambisonic mono microphones
- 10,000 mAh removable battery
- Records to 9 SD cards (!!!)
Credit: Insta360
Credit: Insta360
Why 11K?
I was cautiously optimistic about such a high-resolution image from a camera when I first saw the announcement in January. I justified it by thinking about how much zooming and re-composing is required when working with 360/VR content. Then I saw that Insta360 is marketing this heavily toward VR production and less toward 360º production, and that's when the resolution comes into focus.
Working with such high-resolution images makes the "virtual" part of "virtual reality" a lot more acute. Much like why many CGI-heavy productions use RED cameras, an ultra-high-resolution image gives a great deal more data points for CG artists to utilize. When working with a 360/VR image, that issue gets exacerbated. This 11K solution makes a lot of sense because now, when someone working in CG for a 360º production wants to incorporate their work into the scene, the image won't fall apart as much as it would on a 4K (or even 8K) sensor, thereby preserving that data and giving a better overall quality to both the trackability of the original image and the more realistic incorporation of digital assets into a 360º environment.
It comes at a hefty price.
Insta360 is taking pre-orders for the Titan. A single Titan comes with the Farsight monitoring system and runs for $14,999. But, if you forgot that you need 9 (yes... 9) SD cards to record the image, you can bundle them together on the Insta360 website for $15,339.
360º video is still very much the Wild West in terms of its practicality and usability but because of that, the types of content that are being produced is quite varied and allows for a lot of doors to be open all at once.
How would you use the Insta360 Titan? Let us know in the comments.
Source: DP Review
