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Originally posted in another thread, but given what it is, I think it deserves a place of its own. There’s something very real happening here right now. This is not just a minor upgrade. : ) Insta360 sample for focal length range. source (from Leica HQ BTW) And that detachable screen is basically an on-set field monitor. WOW What a killer combo : X

Most people will probably end up buying both and using them with two different focal lengths, as in the case of the filmmaker you referred to. That level of flexibility is hard to beat. After all, they’re portable and easy to carry around. The footage matches pretty well too. I wouldn’t even mind making a few minor tweaks, if any are needed.

At $30 i'd buy one...

If it had a decent camera I'd actually be interested. But the ones I've seen will all end up as e-waste eventually. If it took photos (I don't really care if it takes video) that looked good on social media I'd be very interested though.

Some kid will use that camera and make a short film and upload it to YT, then he'll get a Hollywood deal. A couple will buy 30 of them and put then on the wedding guest's tables for people to snap photos and take some video. The groom will edit them all together on his phone while sitting on the beach during his honeymoon. He will also upload it to YT and probably get a Hollywood deal. lol.

I think @kye’s point still stands, and maybe it becomes even clearer once you move away from the usual zooms vs primes argument. It always comes down to how much convenience a zoom actually buys you, especially when time becomes critical. On a controlled set, changing lenses can break rhythm, slow down the crew, cost minutes, and sometimes cost the shot. In uncontrolled environments, it can be even more decisive, because you may simply not have the time, the space, or the chance to change lenses before the moment is gone. So yes, a zoom can solve a very practical problem: time, reaction and continuity. That should not be underestimated. If the situation is changing in front of you, the practical convenience of a zoom can become creatively important too. But I don’t think this cancels the OP’s deeper point. There is also another kind of convenience in truly understanding a given focal length. It teaches you where to stand, how close to be, how to move, how much space to leave, and how the scene changes once your own position changes. A zoom may save the moment, but understanding focal lengths changes how you read the moment in the first place. And this is also why I have never had any patience for the 2x, 3x, 5x terminology. I always prefer the actual focal length value, because that tells me something real about the relationship between camera, subject and space. “2x” may be convenient marketing language, but “35mm”, “50mm” or “85mm” immediately tells you much more about how the image is likely to feel and how you may need to position yourself. Leonel Vieira is a good recent example of this. This June, while shooting the making-of on A NOITE, I was able to observe that very particular relationship he has with focal lengths, especially his liking for 75mm and 100mm lenses, focal lengths he has often favoured and used there. That is not just a technical preference. It affects distance, performance, compression, the way actors are observed, and the emotional space between camera and subject. With those lenses, the focal length becomes part of the staging itself, not just a number attached to the lens.

I think the POV Head Tracker should not be seen merely as a vlogging gimmick or as another accessory for people who want to film themselves walking down the street. There are many different ways of filming, framing and capturing reality. The most “professional” approach is often understood as the most controlled one: you plan the shoot, you discuss the framing, you block the scene, you decide where the camera goes, you decide what the subject is supposed to give you, and then you execute. That is obviously valid, and it is the basis of a lot of good cinema. But it is not the only way to make images. There is also another tradition: a more intuitive, observational, physical and spontaneous way of filming, where the camera is less a machine imposing a pre-decided frame on the world and more an extension of the filmmaker’s presence inside that world. That is where I think something like the Insta360 POV Head Tracker becomes interesting. The question is not only “what can it do technically?” The question is: what kind of relationship with reality does it allow? When you are operating a camera in the conventional way, you are always doing several things at once. You are looking, framing, correcting, adjusting, deciding, reacting, and at the same time you are also visibly present as “the person filming”. That presence changes the situation. It changes the people in front of you. It changes the rhythm of what happens. It can intimidate, formalise, freeze or theatricalise reality. In documentary, this is especially important. The more you plan, the more you risk fixing the subject before you have really encountered it. You may think you are observing reality, but you are already working on a construction of reality. You are no longer only receiving what is in front of you. You are fabricating a gaze, and the subject starts to exist inside that fabrication. Of course, complete objectivity does not exist. Every image is already a point of view. But there is still a big difference between a camera that constantly announces itself as an intervention and a camera system that allows the filmmaker to remain more physically and psychologically inside the situation. This is why the POV Head Tracker interests me. It may allow the filmmaker to film without constantly “operating” in the traditional sense. The camera can follow the natural direction of the filmmaker’s attention. The image can become closer to a lived point of view rather than a pre-composed shot. Not perfect objectivity, obviously, but perhaps a more immediate form of subjectivity. That distinction matters. A head-tracked gimbal camera could be useful not because it replaces deliberate cinematography, but because it opens another mode of acquisition: a more instinctive, embodied, less intimidating mode. It lets you be present with the subject while still filming. It can reduce the gap between seeing and recording. In that sense, I see a possible historical parallel with what happened when smaller 16mm cameras became available. Those cameras did not simply make cinema smaller. They changed the grammar of cinema. They allowed filmmakers to move differently, to follow people differently, to enter rooms differently, to film streets, faces, accidents, gestures, private moments and unstable situations in ways that would have been much harder with heavier, more industrial tools. You can connect that to cinéma vérité, direct cinema, the Nouvelle Vague, the New American Cinema, Jonas Mekas in New York, underground and independent filmmaking, and later the influence of that freer, more mobile language on figures like Cassavetes, Scorsese, and the whole post-studio generation. Even mainstream cinema eventually absorbed some of that looseness, that handheld energy, that search for immediacy. Jonas Mekas is not just an abstract reference for me. I had the privilege of knowing him personally in the mid-1990s, at the Figueira da Foz International Film Festival, which he used to attend. In that same context, I was also fortunate enough to receive an award as best daily press film critic. More importantly, a project I am still developing today was born precisely from that contact with Mekas. So when I refer to him here, I am not only invoking a name from film history. I am also referring to a very concrete personal encounter with a way of understanding cinema as diary, presence, immediacy, memory and life. The technology did not create those artistic revolutions by itself. But it made certain gestures possible. And when a tool makes a new gesture possible, it can also make a new kind of cinema possible. That is how I would look at the POV Head Tracker. Not as “AI tracking for creators”, but as a small step toward a different relation between body, gaze and camera. From the end of last month and carrying into this June, I worked on the making-of for A NOITE, Leonel Vieira’s film adaptation of José Saramago’s homonymous play. During the shoot, we used the Osmo Pocket 3 alongside other cameras, including a Sony A7S III, an FX30, a Panasonic GX80/GX85 and other small-format tools, Insta360 included. The film itself was being shot on two ARRI cameras, so this kind of low-profile equipment was obviously not what people on a cinema set are most used to seeing. Even Leonel Vieira, the director, looked at the Osmo Pocket 3 and jokingly said it looked like a toy camera. But that was precisely part of the point. I took the initiative to use it without hesitation, accepting the risks of bringing that kind of device into a professional film set, and combining it with different optical tools, including black mist filters to create atmosphere, Sirui anamorphic lenses and other accessories. In that context, I became very aware of how valuable it would be to have a device that lets me film without constantly managing the camera as an object. Not to mention that 10-bit Log recording is now available on the Luna Ultra as well. In a making-of situation, the best moments often happen before people know they are “performing” for the camera. They happen between takes, in hesitations, glances, silences, rehearsals, small gestures, private exchanges, and moments when the machinery of cinema briefly becomes human again. But the moment you raise the camera, adjust the frame, move closer, correct the angle, ask for space or visibly operate, you can lose the very thing you were trying to capture. The reality in front of the lens changes because of you. And that is fundamental in a making-of context: to be as minimally intrusive as possible, so as not to disturb the set of the main film being shot. The reactions of the professionals involved are, in many ways, the real subject of a making-of, and those reactions should not be manipulated by the visible presence of the image-capturing device itself. In our case, we were working with a very small crew: two to three people at most. In fact, it was necessary to convince Leonel Vieira to accept a maximum of three people, because ideally he preferred two, and sometimes only one person could be present. In those situations, when only one person was shooting and I still needed two possible angles, a camera A and a camera B, the only viable option was to have a B camera as autonomous and unobtrusive as possible, which is exactly how the Osmo Pocket 3 was used. With a device such as the Luna Ultra and its POV Head Tracker, that kind of work would become much easier, not only during the shoot itself but also later, when reaching the post-production suite and needing more options in the edit. So a device that lets the camera follow your attention, while your hands and your body remain less occupied by the act of filming, could be extremely useful. It could allow the operator to be less intrusive, less theatrical, less visibly extractive. It could make the camera feel less like a weapon pointed at reality and more like a witness moving through it. That does not mean this is for every situation. It is not a substitute for composed cinematography, lighting, blocking, lenses, or intentional mise-en-scène. But it could be very valuable for documentary, making-of work, rehearsal footage, street filming, travel, observational cinema, and any situation where spontaneity matters more than perfect formal control. The professional instinct is often to control everything. But sometimes cinema gains power when we control less. Sometimes the most authentic image is not the one we planned best, but the one we were able to receive before reality became aware of our plan. That, to me, is where the POV Head Tracker could become genuinely interesting.