Insta360 x5 Starlapse

I hadn’t done any research on the Insta360 x5’s Starlapse feature before I tried it. That’s pretty normal for me. I’d rather see how something works before I start reading about how it’s supposed to work. So on a recent road trip through Oregon, I threw the x5 on a tripod, selected Starlapse mode, and hit record with the default settings. Then I crawled into the tent, watched a little TV, and passed out.

I didn’t have the camera hooked up to an external power supply, so by morning it was dead. It captured enough to give me something to work with, though.

First thoughts—the star trails feature is kinda cool, but doesn’t look great once it’s exported. Maybe I did it wrong. The straight timelapse export was better, and even caught a little of the Milky Way. I did some reading afterwards and discovered that most people prefer to do star time lapses with the Interval function, so I’ll have to give that a try next time.

I don’t see myself using the 360 camera for every day shooting—reframing 360 video still takes longer than I’d like. But for time lapses, especially when I can just set it and forget it in the middle of nowhere and it manages to accidentally capture the Milky Way, I think I’ll keep it around. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go reframe an hour or so of dashboard-mounted 360 video.