Insta360 X3 Low Light Settings
I’ve been experimenting with the Insta360 X3 low light settings. In this article I share my findings and settings that I use to capture 360 video under low light conditions.
You’ll find on my YouTube channel a video which was filmed in low light using the Insta360 X3 360 action camera. Filming took place between approximately 7.20 am – 8.05 am in the Austrian Alps.
There was a low cloud base covering the town so light levels were affected by this at sunrise.
Settings For Low Light 360 Video
Below are the exact settings I used to film the video, which I’ve embedded into this page for your viewing.
- Bitrate: High
- Sharpness: Low
- Anti flicker: 50Hz (filmed in Europe)
- 5.7K resolution
- 30 frames per second
- Color: Standard
- WB: 2800K – 4800k ( I set the WB over time as the light colour temperature shifted)
- ISO: 400 – 1000 (As with the WB I set the ISO to suit the change in light levels)
- EV: -0.5 ( Helps to reduce overexposed highlights)
- Shutter: 1/60
Some of the settings are self explanatory. I’ll go into more detail on the settings which are more technical.
White Balance
As mentioned earlier this video was filmed at sunrise. This being the case the white balance changed quite significantly over a short period of time.
When I started filming the 360 footage at around 7.20 am most of the light source was artificial street lamps. So I set the X3 white balance to 2800K.
As the sun rose the color temperature rose to around 4800k. The key here is to aim for as pure white times as possible. Not too blue or not too red. You can of course color correct in post production with a little tweaking.
ISO
Along with white balance the ISO setting is absolutely critical. If you leave the X3 to automatically adjust the ISO the camera will overcompensate with a higher ISO which introduces image noise.
Try and keep the ISO below 1000 if possible. The lower the ISO the better. At the beginning of shooting this low light video I had the ISO set to 1000. As the sun rose I had cranked the ISO down to 400.
Shutter Speed
Along with ISO the shutter speed affects the exposure. I set my shutter to double the frame rate of 30 frames per second. This ensures smoother movement.
Final Thoughts
I would like to point out that 360 cameras are not really designed for low light filming. This is mainly down to the size of the image sensor. The X3 has 2 x 1/2 inch sensors.
However, the X3 as demonstrated in this video when using manual settings does produce some pleasant low light video content in my opinion. Video content that is more than adequate to share on social media such as YouTube in most cases.
All the filming in the video was done using the X3 mounted to the invisible selfie stick.