Internal 32-bit float stereo paired with lossless 120mm reach from a 20mm lens — all inside a genuinely pocket-sized 10-bit 1-inch sensor gimbal camera?

[Emanuel]

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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.

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(from Leica HQ BTW)

 

And that detachable screen is basically an on-set field monitor. WOW What a killer combo : X

[eatstoomuchjam]

Starting at $770!! 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Guess they saw GoPro's pricing on the Mission 1 series and said "hold my beer."

 

[Emanuel]

Well, for the price of a good but still affordable zoom lens, I still find it quite a deal! ; )

And AFAIK, it’s the first gimbal camera you can simply lock:

No idea whether the Osmo Pocket 4P will bring that too, but the non-Pro version doesn’t seem to.

EDIT -- I had heard that the Pocket 4 didn’t have it, but as far as I’ve been able to confirm now, they’ve introduced it across both new Pocket 4 models. Looks like the battle between the two brands has brought some benefits for their customers... ;- )

[QuickHitRecord]

I've never been tempted by one of these smaller pocket gimbals, but the image quality actually looks really nice. It doesn't look over-sharpened or GoPro-like at all. Of course, it's Brandon Li, who can make anything look good. The detachable remote is also really clever.

I want my next short to be captured guerilla-style in the city. I was originally considering the hacked EOS-M, but this has me re-thinking my strategy. I just really wish it had a mic input so that I could capture timecode.

[kye]

To me the zoom is the most significant function here.  This is meant to be a walk-around film-the-surroundings camera and my experience is that everyone who rigs a camera for this purpose uses a zoom with pretty significant zoom lens.

The biggest con of this is the fact it's a gimbal, and therefore stabilises rotation but not position, leading to the dreaded bobbing movement and foreground parallax errors.  These might be my candidate for the least cinematic image attribute of all time (linked to timestamp):

This is why gimbals need the fourth axis for walking, and why people don't shoot gimbal shots with any foreground in them.  By applying less stabilisation you end up with a more stable looking shot because the stabilisation doesn't call so much attention to itself.

[Emanuel]

Yes, indeed, but a few third-party brands offer that simple, inexpensive accessory, and it can easily be added to your setup.

 

[Emanuel]

Impressive if nothing else ; )

And here’s another feature that is, undeniably, not only pure fun:

...but just useful enough to say the least : X

[Emanuel]

Breaking news. The product is so obvious no-brainer, DJI has decided to declare a legal war against their most serious threat:

https://petapixel.com/2026/06/11/dji-is-suing-insta360-for-violating-multiple-osmo-pocket-patents/

The apocalyptic precedent is Kodak v. Polaroid, where Kodak was effectively pushed out of instant photography, but that was a much deeper, ecosystem-level disaster, not just another Tuesday in consumer electronics litigation. 

DJI has itself been through patent warfare with Autel over drones. And Insta360 recently faced GoPro in a camera-related dispute that did not exactly erase its current lineup from existence. 

Apple and Samsung spent years throwing patent grenades at each other before settling. 

[Emanuel]

This is where computational photography becomes impossible to ignore and where it starts to look more like computational cinematography.

These Luna Ultra low-light comparisons are not simply about sensor size, ISO or aperture. They are about the entire imaging pipeline. The Luna is not just “seeing better” in the traditional optical sense; it is processing harder. It is lifting shadows, stabilising exposure, reducing noise, rebuilding colour, brightening faces and subjects, and delivering an immediately usable image in situations where more traditional camera pipelines can look extremely dark straight out of camera.

The Sony FX3 comparison is especially revealing. The FX3 is a serious full-frame low-light video/cinema camera, here shown in 4K S-Log 3 at ISO 12,800, f/2.8 and a 180° shutter. That is not a weak setup. The Canon R6 V comparison is also striking, with the camera shown in 4K C-Log 2 at ISO 25,600, f/2.8 and 1/50. Yet, in these posted frames, both traditional camera images look dramatically darker than the Luna Ultra low-light mode.

Of course, this does not mean the Luna is “better” than an FX3 or a Canon cinema-style camera in any broad professional sense. It is not. Log footage is not supposed to be judged as a finished image before grading, and larger-sensor cameras still have major advantages in colour depth, dynamic range control, lens choice, codec robustness, monitoring, rigging and production workflow. Properly exposed, lit and graded, they remain much more flexible tools.

But that is not really the point. The disruptive point is that the Luna is delivering a visible, usable image immediately, in situations where a traditional cinema pipeline still expects the operator to expose carefully, light when necessary, grade later and finish the image in post.

The iPhone comparison makes the argument even more interesting, because a phone is already a computational camera. Smartphones built their reputation by using software to overcome small sensors: multi-frame processing, HDR, tone mapping, noise reduction, subject detection and AI-assisted reconstruction. So when the Luna Ultra in 4K low light Mode produces a dramatically more visible image than the iPhone 17 Pro Max 1x lens in this kind of scene, the story is no longer just “computational camera beats traditional camera”. It is “a dedicated computational video camera can beat a flagship smartphone at its own game”.

That distinction matters. Smartphone night photography and smartphone low-light video are not the same thing. Phones can do extraordinary things with stills because they can merge frames, hold exposure, stabilise aggressively and tolerate a more processed photographic look. Video is harder. It has to work continuously, frame after frame, without destroying motion, faces, texture and temporal consistency. In this example, the iPhone image remains very dark, while the Luna Ultra clearly prioritises subject visibility, colour recovery and immediate usability.

So the real lesson is this: low-light performance is no longer just a hardware contest. It is sensor plus lens plus stabilisation plus temporal denoising plus tone mapping plus AI reconstruction plus exposure strategy. The most useful image may come not from the device with the largest sensor, but from the device with the smartest pipeline.

The Luna does not replace cinema cameras. It does not replace phones either. But it attacks the space between them: fast, handheld, available-light video where the most important question is not “which camera has the biggest sensor?”, but “which camera gives me the shot I can actually use?”

And in these comparisons, the answer is surprisingly uncomfortable for devices that are much bigger, much more expensive, and much more established.

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[Ilkka Nissila]

This is quite misleading as mirrorless cameras can be set up to do a similar thing where the image is tone-mapped and written to a rec 709 video, usable immediately. The use of a log format and pretending that it is meant for direct viewing and comparing that to a highly processed video from a different camera is a bit disingenuous when cameras have menus with processing settings that allow the user to get a video without editing, with less AI for sure, but with good algorithms that do a roughlysimilar thing more predictably and with higher quality. I am not familiar with how Canon or Sony cameras do things but on Nikon I often use ADL which is their tone-mapping algorithm and it allows me to shoot high contrast, suboptimally lit scenes and get good results without editing. Log video is specifically a storage format and not meant for immediate viewing, which you of course know.

 

Extremely edited night time footage where subjects have been dug out from the shadows will never look very good, and using appropriate lighting and/or making the video in conditions where the existing lighting is half decent is better than relying on extreme AI processing.

 

This is probably one of the reasons why compact cameras are enjoying a resurgence: people are sick and tired of the sickly-looking overprocessed results from smartphones, and even a compact camera that has a small sensor but does not overprocess the image is preferred.

[Emanuel]

Fair point. Agreed : ) A proper apples-to-apples test should also include each mirrorless camera in its best baked-in Rec.709 / HDR / tone-mapped profile, not only Log.

Log is obviously not meant to be judged as a finished image straight out of camera.

But that was not really the point.

The point is not that the Luna has “better” image quality than an FX3, R6-style camera or any serious mirrorless body in a controlled professional workflow. It clearly does not.

 

The interesting part is that this tiny dedicated video camera is giving a highly usable, stabilised, low-light image immediately, with very little operator burden, in a form factor where people would normally expect a large compromise.

That is where the disruption is: not pure sensor performance, but the whole capture pipeline: lens, stabilisation, exposure strategy, temporal processing, denoising, subject visibility and ready-to-use output.

So yes, a mirrorless camera can absolutely be configured to produce a good baked-in image. But the Luna is attacking a different use case: fast handheld available-light shooting where the question is not “which camera has the most flexible file in post?”, but “which camera gets me a usable shot right now, from my pocket, without rigging, lighting or grading?”

That does not make it a cinema camera replacement. It makes it a much more serious pocket production tool than this category used to be.

[Snowfun]

Presumably there will be significant  demand from news broadcasting/journalism for this “quality in the pocket”. In addition to the obvious applications in DIY sports videos.  

[kye]

On 6/14/2026 at 6:43 PM, Ilkka Nissila said:

This is probably one of the reasons why compact cameras are enjoying a resurgence: people are sick and tired of the sickly-looking overprocessed results from smartphones, and even a compact camera that has a small sensor but does not overprocess the image is preferred.

I think compact cameras are also enjoying a resurgence because some of them are far worse than smartphones!  Just look at how retro SD video cameras have taken off, and how people are applying 00s digicam filters in post to their (comparatively pristine) smartphone footage too.

In a way the high quality and ubiquity of smartphones creates a desire for something different...  which includes things like poor image quality (low resolution / DR / bitrates / etc), long zooms, ghosting and other image distortions, etc.  Beyond even that I think the fact that the phone is in people's hands for many hours a day means that having a change means putting something else in your hand, so a dedicated camera allows for that change of pace.  It also means that taking a photo at a social event or festival or solo walk etc doesn't mean involuntarily seeing all the notifications on your Lock Screen either.

People are always looking for a change from what they have, and when what they have is high quality that means they will pursue low-quality.

[kye]

For example, here's a K-pop video that clearly has enough budget for half-decent cameras, but was shot on cheap looking cameras and definitely looks like it:

...and don't think it's a student film or anything, it was posted 6 weeks ago and has 9M views and lists the A&R person amongst the dozen or more people involved in making it!

[Ilkka Nissila]

2 hours ago, kye said:

I think compact cameras are also enjoying a resurgence because some of them are far worse than smartphones!  Just look at how retro SD video cameras have taken off, and how people are applying 00s digicam filters in post to their (comparatively pristine) smartphone footage too.

In a way the high quality and ubiquity of smartphones creates a desire for something different...  which includes things like poor image quality (low resolution / DR / bitrates / etc), long zooms, ghosting and other image distortions, etc.  Beyond even that I think the fact that the phone is in people's hands for many hours a day means that having a change means putting something else in your hand, so a dedicated camera allows for that change of pace.  It also means that taking a photo at a social event or festival or solo walk etc doesn't mean involuntarily seeing all the notifications on your Lock Screen either.

People are always looking for a change from what they have, and when what they have is high quality that means they will pursue low-quality.

I find it difficult to believe that worse quality as such is the motivating factor, but a less polished result, a less artificially processed and perfected result may be desirable when one wishes to appear authentic and I do believe a lot of people are tired of the ultra-processed images from mobile phones and editing apps. They may also be tired of commercial images for partly similar reasons: DYI images may look more real and home-made, and somehow more true to the person in the photos, even if not captured by extended arm holding the camera but someone who truly knows the person in the picture. In some cases,  commercially produced portraits which often reflect the photographer's tastes and some product or image style that the photographer has found successful and applies to all their clients. Doing it yourself for an authentic feel doesn't mean the quality of the photo has to be poor. Of course, it's possible that some people specifically want a "different" look such as 8 mm film etc. but I don't think this is common or at the core of the issue, the excessive processing and manufactured "perfection" is much more likely to be what triggers a change in fashion (or perhaps I am just wishing that). You may be correct that the smartphone generation sometimes just wants to use something other than their smartphone, that's perfectly understandable and would be a healthy development. 

In my mind "high quality" and "smartphone" are difficult to put in the same sentence with a straight face. High quality for some things, yes, but for a lot of things, not good quality at all.

[BTM_Pix]

I’d have urged caution in buying the Luna before DJI released the Pro version of the Pocket 4 anyway but now the P4P has been officially released in China then I would definitely hold out for some comparisons.

One of the major USPs of the Luna is the excellent removeable remote screen but it seems DJI have an interesting solution with a small external remote for the P4P.

Its a bit of a swings and roundabout in that it is more convenient with the Luna but it’s equally true that if you drop the remote then it’s game over until you can locate a new one.

Insta threw everyone a curveball (shills included) by releasing the Luna far earlier than expected and it’s worth considering that this was in part motivated by them discovering their major USP was about to be countered with the P4P solution.

Oh and the 17 stops of dynamic range of the P4P is interesting too.