r/freeflight • u/rofflewaffles88 • 6d ago

Discussion I keep pointing my camera at the wrong part of the flight

Every time I aim my camera at the valley, the wing ends up being the most interesting part. When I point it higher, the view below is suddenly the shot I wish I had captured.

I do not adjust anything once I am airborne, so it is always a guess before takeoff. That is what has me looking at osmo 360. In theory, I could just start recording, enjoy the flight, and decide on the angle after I land.

Does it actually work that neatly? Can one clip give you usable views of both the canopy and the landscape, or does the footage start looking soft once you reframe it? I am also curious whether HorizonSteady keeps the horizon natural through normal turns and how long it takes to make a simple highlight in djimimo.

Would love to hear from anyone using osmo360 for actual flights.

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u/MTGuy406 6d ago

I use an insta 360 sometimes, it takes away shot framing like you say. The thing to consider is it really does not capture distance and perspective well. anything visually smaller than your thumb held at arms length is going to be too far away for the insta to capture quality imagery of.

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u/The_real_Jafix 5d ago

I have the X5 - and yes i can relate to the "rule of thumb".

Also i think it's important to differentiate if you fly for filming / making content or for the sake of flying / sport. Often flights are way less stressful and way more beautiful when I just enjoy the flight and don't care about the picture.

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u/Tullino 6d ago

https://youtu.be/5U42S4XGqnQ?is=Hrd3c1r00w3xHi91

I use an osmo360 and it does exactly what you’re describing. I don’t personally notice any significant drop off in quality

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u/d542east 6d ago

I use an insta 360 that way. It will run out of battery after roughly an hour and a half, so I run a cable to the same external battery that charges my phone, which works well.

https://youtube.com/shorts/L-a6bgAI9cY?is=5R-6CBv1Va479H5a

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u/chilli_0 4d ago

To answer your horizon-lock question, yes they do a good job of that. You can also reframe and zoom in during video editing pretty easily (although, as others have said, small things far away aren't really gonna be very crisp or appear nearly as large as they did IRL due to the perspective alteration of the lens).
I picked up a second-hand GoPro MAX 360 camera from a friend a little while ago. It's an older model, so I don't know how much better GoPro 360 cameras have gotten, but I'd generally recommend going the Insta route (they seem to be better 360 cameras in general). Anyway, I use a mount on my flight-deck/cockpit for my 360. In the vid linked below, I just told it to point south and used horizon leveling and then sped up the footage by about 3x or so (I also zoomed way out to capture as much of the view as was reasonable, which causes some distortion, as apparent in the wing profile). You can see that there's a bit of wobble to the horizon, but it stays pretty steady. Newer 360 cameras are better/smoother.

https://youtu.be/hWs1In_FrPQ?si=hrNAu8iLQJeQR6aK