Taking 360 Rumors to the Next Level! A brief history of 360 cameras

In 2016, I created 360 Rumors as a resource for the 360 camera community.  Eight years later, I’m passing the baton to a company that I believe will take it to the next level.  Here’s a look at how 360 Rumors began, which runs parallel to the story of the 360 camera industry, and where it’s going next.

HOW 360 RUMORS BEGAN

I created 360 Rumors as a resource for the 360 camera community.  But did you wonder why I was so passionate about it?  It was because of my family.

I started learning photography in earnest in 2006, when we were about to have our first baby.  As a child, I loved looking at my baby album from time to time and enjoyed remembering precious moments that our family shared.  I wanted my son (and later our daughter) to have that experience too, which is why I learned photography.

Over the years, I took photos of our family, and continued learning photography and acquired dozens of DSLRs, lenses, and lighting equipment.  I tried using techniques employed by wedding photographers to take our family photos, applying techniques that I learned from photographers such as David Hobby (Strobist) and Neil van Niekerk.

I was generally pleased with our family photos.  One time, my son was looking through them and I asked him what he thought.  He said he felt “loved.”  I felt like my hard work had paid off.

Sadly, taking all these photos had a heavy cost – and I don’t mean monetarily.  Although the photos looked like casual snapshots, they actually required a lot of time to execute.  Every time we went out, I had a backpack full of camera gear and I would have to ask my family to wait as I took test shots and adjusted the settings before I took a shot. I was more like an event photographer than a dad.  My memories of our vacations were of how I was taking photos of my kids instead of being with them.

(What does all this have to do with 360 Rumors?  I’m getting there.)

TURNING POINT

The turning point for me was in 2015, when I tried the Ricoh Theta, the first consumer 360 camera.  At that time, I was interested in it because I loved fisheye and ultrawide lenses, and I thought that the Theta would be another kind of ultrawide lens.  But after shooting with the Theta for a while, I discovered that it enabled me to do something that I could not do before.

Instead of taking photos like an event photographer, I could be with my family.  Take this shot for example.  We went to Legoland and my kids got on a ride.  Until that time, I would have been standing outside the ride with the other parents taking photos.  But with the Theta, I could be on the ride with my kids and we could enjoy it together as I took a shot of us.

Another time, I was able to teach my kids to ski without worrying about getting a shot of us simply by holding the camera on a selfie stick.  I could focus on my time with my kids instead of getting the shot.  For the first time, I got to fully enjoy the time with my family and my kids got to be with their dad instead of a wannabe photographer.  This radical difference convinced me that 360 cameras were the ideal cameras for family photos.

At that time, almost no one knew about 360 cameras, much less how they could bring families closer together.  I tried to spread the word by submitting 360 camera news tips to DPReview and Petapixel but they never posted them.  So I decided 360 cameras needed their own version of DPReview and Petapixel and thus 360 Rumors was born.

GROWTH

Over the next months, I steadily shared 360 camera news and reviews, and I saw people were reading them.  I even wrote about a 4k camera that looked like a blocky external hard drive called the Insta360 4K Beta, unknowingly becoming perhaps the first blog on the Western hemisphere to talk about Insta360.  After I wrote about their second camera — the Insta360 Nano — Insta360 began reaching out to me and I started becoming a product tester for them, giving them suggestions over the years and getting to know their founder / CEO and senior management.

360 cameras remained an obscure category of cameras until a revolutionary change in 2017.  Insta360 Nano added a new feature (via firmware!) — 360 stabilization.  The Nano was a unique 360 camera that was attached to an iPhone.  Insta360 was able to use the gyroscope in the phone to add 360-degree stabilization to the Nano’s 360 photos or videos.  You could shoot with it at any angle and the 360 video or photo would remain level.  This was itself amazing but I would argue the real breakthrough came a few months later with Xiaomi Mi Sphere.

Xiaomi Mi Sphere was a compact and slim camera, like the size of a wallet but much slimmer.  Xiaomi added stabilization to the Mi Sphere with no need to connect to a phone.  That in itself might not sound remarkable but it unlocked a new possibility.  At that time, 360 shooters already knew that that if you use a sufficiently thin selfie stick with a 360 camera, the selfie stick would disappear.  But what I discovered was that because of stabilization, it would create the illusion that the video was shot with an invisible flying camera, capturing a unique third person view.  Here’s the video I posted on May 22, 2017, which as far as I know is the first time anyone showed the invisible flying camera effect in a video.

As more people learned about this invisible flying camera effect, they grew to realize the value of 360 cameras.  They weren’t just for 360 videos or photos, but more importantly, they could be used to capture third person views.  As the importance of 360 cameras shifted away from 360 videos to reframed videos with a third person view, Insta360 marketed 360 cameras with clever taglines such as ‘invisible flying cameras,” and  “shoot first, point later,” and they started to catch on.

WHAT’S NEXT

Thanks to Insta360’s extensive marketing campaigns, 360 cameras have now become more familiar to many people.  In certain sports, such as motorcycling, snowboarding and skateboarding, for example, 360 cameras have become very popular – rivaling the popularity of traditional action cams.  Whereas I used to be one of a handful of YouTube channels that talked about 360 cameras, now many tech channels review 360 cameras.  And virtual tours are now fairly common in real estate.

Meanwhile, my kids have grown.  My son will soon be applying to college and my daughter will be applying to high school.  It’s a critical time in their life and I want to do what I can to give them more guidance.  Just as my photography journey began with my family, and my family is the reason I got into 360 cameras, they are also the reason that I am moving on from blogging.

But there’s still a lot of work left to be done for 360 cameras.  While techies are familiar with 360 cameras, most people still don’t know that 360 cameras can capture a third person view.

THE SEARCH

I had to look for a steward who could take over 360 Rumors.  Someone who was knowledgeable, hard-working, honest, and passionate about 360 Rumors.  I did find such a person and after long negotiations, we finally closed the deal.

Meet Vineet Devaiah, a longtime reader of 360 Rumors and now its new owner.  You might recognize Vineet also as the founder of Teliportme virtual tour software.  I got to know Vineet years ago as he invited me to try Teliportme.  Over the years, I’ve requested many features and Vineet, together with his team, would work hard to add them, such as support for high resolution photos up to 32k.

Among other things, I’m hoping that Vineet can take 360 Rumors to the next level using his skills as an entrepreneur and software developer.  I’m very excited to see what he can do with 360 Rumors.

Meanwhile, I’ll still be writing articles every now and then.  I will also keep my Youtube channel 360 Vroomers and will still post camera and gear reviews.  You can still count on me to provide objective and honest reviews to help you make an informed decision.

As for Vineet, watch for his first post on Monday where he’ll share his plans for 360 Rumors!