The iPhone was hard to come up by when it first came out. Even if you were willing to pay the exorbitant price, it had sold out in merely a few hours in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. So when I pulled mine out at bars or on street corners, I was exceptionally popular. People wanted to see information technology and talk to me about it. They wanted to sympathize how information technology worked. And afterwards talking to me for 10 minutes, they wanted one.

I haven't had an experience like that with any other piece of technology until a few weeks ago, when I started to use the Samsung Gear 360 on a trip to Singapore. The tiny globe—information technology looks a scrap like a GoPro, a fleck like a webcam—captures 360-caste photos and videos using two fish-eye lenses. The result tin then be shared with friends online, who tin can move effectually inside the image using a mouse, or viewed using a VR headset such as the Samsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard. And it attracts curious people like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.

If you'd told me vi months agone I'd be stoked about shooting VR videos, I would have laughed at you. Near of the VR experiences I've had accept made me a petty nauseous, so shooting my own wasn't exactly something I was clamoring to do. And so I went to a dinner political party where a friend of mine had a 360 photographic camera and was taking photos of the group. I had to try it out. Bzzzt.

With 360 pics and VR, yous truly feel like you're somewhere, not just experiencing it through someone else'due south optics. It'south not exactly like being there, but it's tremendously closer than anything I've ever been able to capture or share earlier. And that actually excites me: Helping people visit places they physically can't become. My mother has advanced multiple sclerosis and lives in an Assisted Living facility in Due north Carolina. Her terminal "big trip" was to Target about a mile away, and took at to the lowest degree a week of planning. I can't look to be able to put a VR headset on her caput and have her on a virtual trip to Singapore, or even to my apartment in San Francisco. Both are places she'll probably never be able to go, but it'southward an experience I tin can kind of replicate for her. To me, the prospect of existence able to take someone who tin can't leave their hospital bed somewhere else in the earth is magical.

Photo: Flickr user Maurizio Pesce

Since I got my easily on the camera (Samsung was dainty enough to lend me one to try out), I've made a signal to pull information technology out whenever I tin. My inauguration for the device was a trip to a strange state, which I would argue is the best place possible to use it. Certain, I could (and did) snap photos with my trusty smartphone to post on Instagram, but there are some experiences that your standard photo merely tin can't capture. Boat cruise in Singapore? Definitely shot a 360-degree video of that. Amazing dinner with more local food than any of us could handle? Took a 360 picture of that, too. Dissimilar a standard photo of the same scene, about everyone in our (large) group asked me to see the pic after I took it, and they were mesmerized by the camera's power to fully capture that moment.

The best example is the Supertree Grove in Singapore's Garden'due south By The Bay (you lot can come across the video at the top of this story). These massive 165-foot human-made copse look like they've been pulled out of a sci-fi novel. The regular photos are skilful enough to get my Facebook embrace image. Simply a nevertheless image, even with a wide-angle lens, doesn't give yous a concept of how huge and futuristic the whole scene feels.

Using the Gear 360 I stood in the center of the Grove and shot a short video and uploaded it to Facebook, which now supports 360-degree videos. Information technology's become i of my most pop posts to appointment.

Better yet, someone could strap on a Gear VR headset and be transported into the scene. The calendar week I got dorsum, I attended a dinner political party with some friends who had likewise gone on the trip with me. When the conversation turned to our holiday, we were able to testify the others there who hadn't gone exactly what it was like to visit some of the places we went to. You just can't do that with photos.

Tips, Tricks, And When To Put It Away

Capturing pictures and video with a 360 camera is fairly simple. Everything is controlled on your telephone (in my case the Galaxy S7 Border) and, in one case the devices are paired using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi direct, it's as easy equally snapping your boilerplate selfie. I selection between photo or video inside the Gear 360 app, press the push, and the Gear 360 starts to record.

The camera is essentially taking two pictures (or videos) at the same fourth dimension using fish-eye lenses mounted on each side of the camera. In one case you're washed, you take to stitch the two together, a process that can exist done on your phone or reckoner using software that came with the photographic camera.

Set up a timer. My commencement dozen videos start with an image of me holding a phone. Oops. Then I figured out how to change the settings on my camera so that information technology would only begin recording after a 10-2d delay. That ways that after I striking the shutter button, I accept 10 crucial seconds to put away the telephone and fix my shot. While "on her phone" is my real-life default setting, it'due south not exactly how I want to exist commemorated in virtual reality for all fourth dimension.

Apply a selfie stick. I'm notoriously confronting using monopods when in public. They're a nuisance and have been banned from plenty of places already. But it dramatically enhances the quality of the images I was able to have in 360 degrees. Instead of holding the camera in forepart of me—which means my awkward selfie takes up a whole side of the image or video—I was able to hoist the photographic camera in a higher place my head to shoot. That move puts the viewer of my images in the center of the action, so that their caput substantially replaces mine as the bespeak of view in the picture. Go along that in mind as y'all begin authoring your own 360 videos: If you lot identify the camera on the roof of a boat, as I did in social club to get an unobstructed view of the harbor, the viewer will feel equally though she is riding on meridian of the boat equally well. That may be a good or bad thing, depending on how prone she is to seasickness.

Treat information technology like a video camera. Most of the 360 cameras out there expect more similar webcams than yet cameras, which is a distinction that I noticed makes people a scrap uncomfortable. I night the group I was traveling with decided to take a selfie while all drinking Singapore Slings at the Raffles Hotel, the birthplace of the Sling. Taking a group photo in a bar, specially a famous one, is a totally normal and non-threatening matter. Only when I set the 360 camera up on a tripod in the center of the tabular array, we were rather chop-chop approached by a bartender and asked to "not record" in the bar. He (and I presume people around us) thought it was a video camera. And perhaps it is more like video than still photos, given the way viewers can explore the image.

Moving effectually doesn't work. I shot 360 videos in a number of moving scenarios, but for the well-nigh function, I've found recording things where you lot're the one doing the moving are generally not so nifty. I shot a video on the back of a boat (where a boat was doing the moving) that worked out wonderfully. A video of me walking around a garden with the camera over my head? Not as wonderful. In a 360 video, the viewer expects to be able to movement closer to parts of a scene. In my garden video, for instance, yous would accept likely approached the flowers you wanted to have a closer expect at. When I'm walking, you're forced to stay on my path, making that experience more similar a regular video. And then in that location's the natural bouncing we all do when walking, which can brand a spirited stroll feel similar a carnival ride for the viewer.

You draw attention. No matter where you are, you lot draw a ton of attending to yourself when you're walking around with a camera hoisted above your head. Unless you dear attracting the concerned gazes of strangers, you don't want to do that too many times or for too long in crowded places.

How To Get 1

The Gear 360 became bachelor in the U.S., briefly, on June 22 at the VidCon, an online video conference in California. For now, Samsung appears to be focusing on putting the photographic camera in the hands of content creators, the people who ultimately are going to evidence you what's possible with the camera, and why you definitely need one.

Samsung plans to brand the Gear 360 available to everyone later this year for $349. (And if you lot just tin't wait, the international-only version is already for sale.)

For the full effect, the Gear VR headset is available now for just $99, and is often free when you buy a new phone, cheers to a number of different promotions.

Other companies, including GoPro, LG, Ricoh, Nokia, and even Kodak are also making 360 cameras. While Samsung's option is currently only compatible with Samsung phones, some of the others out there offer iPhone compatibility besides as back up for other Android phones.

Like the first iPhone, I think 360 cameras are i of those things most people will need to come across for themselves before they really "go" why they need ane. Your flip phone was awesome in 2006, right? And even so, 360 could show to be a novelty—everyone had to have a GoPro, until they didn't any more. Only once you encounter it in person, and what information technology can do, it'due south hard to become back to shooting regular former photos and videos.

related video: Volition Virtual Reality Go Mainstream?