The iPhone was hard to come up by when it showtime came out. Fifty-fifty if yous were willing to pay the exorbitant price, information technology had sold out in just a few hours in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. So when I pulled mine out at confined or on street corners, I was exceptionally popular. People wanted to see it and talk to me well-nigh it. They wanted to understand how it worked. And after talking to me for ten minutes, they wanted ane.

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

If you'd told me six months ago I'd be stoked about shooting VR videos, I would have laughed at you. Most of the VR experiences I've had take fabricated me a picayune nauseous, so shooting my own wasn't exactly something I was clamoring to do. Then I went to a dinner party where a friend of mine had a 360 photographic camera and was taking photos of the group. I had to attempt information technology out. Bzzzt.

With 360 pics and VR, you truly feel similar you're somewhere, non just experiencing information technology through someone else'due south optics. It's not exactly like existence there, just it's tremendously closer than anything I've always been able to capture or share before. And that really 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 North Carolina. Her last "big trip" was to Target about a mile away, and took at least a calendar week of planning. I can't wait to be able to put a VR headset on her head and accept her on a virtual trip to Singapore, or even to my apartment in San Francisco. Both are places she'll probably never exist able to go, only information technology'due south an experience I can kind of replicate for her. To me, the prospect of being able to have someone who tin can't leave their hospital bed somewhere else in the world is magical.

Photograph: Flickr user Maurizio Pesce

Since I got my hands on the photographic camera (Samsung was dainty enough to lend me one to try out), I've fabricated a betoken to pull it out whenever I tin can. My inauguration for the device was a trip to a foreign country, which I would argue is the all-time place possible to utilise it. Sure, I could (and did) snap photos with my trusty smartphone to postal service on Instagram, but there are some experiences that your standard photograph but can't capture. Boat prowl in Singapore? Definitely shot a 360-degree video of that. Amazing dinner with more local food than any of united states of america could handle? Took a 360 flick of that, too. Unlike a standard photo of the aforementioned scene, almost everyone in our (big) group asked me to encounter the picture after I took it, and they were mesmerized past the camera's ability to fully capture that moment.

The best example is the Supertree Grove in Singapore's Garden's By The Bay (y'all can run into the video at the top of this story). These massive 165-pes human-made trees await similar they've been pulled out of a sci-fi novel. The regular photos are good enough to get my Facebook cover epitome. Simply a yet image, even with a wide-angle lens, doesn't give you a concept of how huge and futuristic the whole scene feels.

Using the Gear 360 I stood in the middle of the Grove and shot a short video and uploaded it to Facebook, which now supports 360-caste videos. It'south become ane of my most popular posts to date.

Ameliorate yet, someone could strap on a Gear VR headset and exist transported into the scene. The week I got back, I attended a dinner party with some friends who had also gone on the trip with me. When the conversation turned to our vacation, nosotros were able to show the others there who hadn't gone exactly what it was like to visit some of the places we went to. Y'all just can't do that with photos.

Tips, Tricks, And When To Put It Away

Capturing pictures and video with a 360 camera is adequately simple. Everything is controlled on your phone (in my case the Galaxy S7 Edge) and, one time the devices are paired using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi direct, it'southward as easy as snapping your average selfie. I pick between photograph or video within the Gear 360 app, press the button, and the Gear 360 starts to record.

The camera is essentially taking 2 pictures (or videos) at the same fourth dimension using fish-middle lenses mounted on each side of the camera. Once yous're washed, you have to stitch the 2 together, a process that tin be done on your phone or computer using software that came with the photographic camera.

Prepare a timer. My kickoff dozen videos outset with an epitome of me holding a phone. Oops. Then I figured out how to change the settings on my camera then that information technology would just begin recording after a 10-2d filibuster. That means that subsequently I hit the shutter push button, I accept ten crucial seconds to put away the telephone and set up my shot. While "on her telephone" is my existent-life default setting, information technology's not exactly how I want to be commemorated in virtual reality for all time.

Use a selfie stick. I'chiliad notoriously against using monopods when in public. They're a nuisance and accept been banned from enough of places already. Just it dramatically enhances the quality of the images I was able to have in 360 degrees. Instead of property the camera in front of me—which means my awkward selfie takes up a whole side of the image or video—I was able to hoist the camera higher up my head to shoot. That move puts the viewer of my images in the center of the action, so that their head essentially replaces mine as the point of view in the picture. Continue that in heed equally you brainstorm authoring your own 360 videos: If y'all place the camera on the roof of a gunkhole, every bit I did in order to become an unobstructed view of the harbor, the viewer will experience as though she is riding on elevation of the boat likewise. That may be a good or bad thing, depending on how prone she is to seasickness.

Treat it like a video photographic camera. Virtually of the 360 cameras out there wait more similar webcams than still cameras, which is a distinction that I noticed makes people a bit uncomfortable. One nighttime 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, peculiarly a famous i, is a totally normal and non-threatening thing. Just when I fix the 360 photographic camera up on a tripod in the middle of the table, we were rather apace approached by a bartender and asked to "not record" in the bar. He (and I presume people around us) thought it was a video photographic camera. And perhaps information technology is more like video than still photos, given the mode viewers tin can explore the image.

Moving around doesn't piece of work. I shot 360 videos in a number of moving scenarios, merely for the most part, I've institute recording things where yous're the one doing the moving are by and large not so great. 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 effectually a garden with the camera over my caput? Non as wonderful. In a 360 video, the viewer expects to be able to move closer to parts of a scene. In my garden video, for case, yous would have likely approached the flowers yous wanted to take a closer wait at. When I'm walking, yous're forced to stay on my path, making that experience more similar a regular video. And and so there'southward the natural bouncing we all practise when walking, which tin can make a spirited stroll feel like a carnival ride for the viewer.

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

How To Become One

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

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

For the full effect, the Gear VR headset is available now for simply $99, and is often costless when you purchase a new telephone, thanks to a number of unlike promotions.

Other companies, including GoPro, LG, Ricoh, Nokia, and even Kodak are also making 360 cameras. While Samsung's selection is currently only uniform with Samsung phones, some of the others out there offer iPhone compatibility every bit well as support for other Android phones.

Like the first iPhone, I recall 360 cameras are one of those things well-nigh people will demand to see for themselves before they actually "get" why they demand i. Your flip phone was crawly in 2006, right? And even then, 360 could evidence to be a novelty—everyone had to take a GoPro, until they didn't whatsoever more than. Simply once you lot see it in person, and what it can do, it's hard to become back to shooting regular old photos and videos.

related video: Will Virtual Reality Get Mainstream?