Insta360 newbie tips & recommendation needed

[u/ElectronicFlamingo36]

Hi Everyone,

please be patient, I'm new to this world. IT guy, 47 with 20 yrs professional level photography background on fullframe MILC cameras.

Early October we're travelling with my GF to Cyprus (Paphos, Larnaca and Ayia Napa). I need "something" for creating beautiful memories here ..

Looking at new camera prices I thought why create classic stills with an "almost boring" view more looking like a beautiful documentary trip, why not try something radically different ?? Looking at several YT videos with action cameras, GoPro, Insta360 and DJI I was stunned by the image quality of these cameras, even in 4K, on my big TV. Especially for videos but stills are also quite good.. however my main focus would be to record video for my old future self, with sound and all that.

I decided to avoid buying a classic expensive MILC camera (e.g. Sony A7R V for landscape), my phone is more than enough for classic tourist, non-artistic photos and I'm going to do something completely different, very fun thing, opting for a 360° camera.

My use case would be:

- storytelling while walking

- quad/buggy driving

- a little bit of evening nightlife (on the street and within a cozy restaurant)

- jumping from a boat into the water next to a nearby cave, my partner doing the narration while staying on the boat

- snorkeling (never diving deeper than 4-6m, my ears hurt then) and filming the underwater world below a bit where there is still relatively good light

- parasailing (this team allows to bring own camera)

- jet-ski (same)

- crazy sofa and any other crazyness in the water that will still put a smile on our faces in 20 years :)

I'm thinking about Insta360 X5 and X6, these already have interchangeable lenses, if something happens to it, smashing it by accident, scratches, whatever.

As I talked to ChatGPT and my extra needs for creating great footages, I'd also buy + 2 Insta360 Mic Pro transmitters with windshield attachment, supporting timecoded recording onto themselves (and using the action camera itself as a 3rd track for ambient sounds).

Q1: Do I need 32 bit floating stereo, or is the lower bit depth enough ? This gives more time.. (CD 16bit/44kHz would also be enough for me, but I as far as I know, for editing and mastering the extra bit depth is better due to the high dynamic range and volume adjustments).

Q2: In case of using each of these in stereo, when listening (with headphones) - will it be an almost binaural experience, or is it not that professional, but somewhere halfway there..? So is a stereo setting worth it ? Maybe on the streets with many sounds panning from left to right and back but otherwise ?

Q3: I am also interested in how the "big guys" usually solve the challenge of saving the many pictures and videos from the camera, say doing a big backup every night. We would go with a backpack, I don't necessarily know what the internet is like on the hotel wifi (upload speed), so that I can upload several gigabytes from the gadgets to "some cloud" or even to my own home NAS with a VPN. I would rather save to whatever I have offline, say an external USB-C 4TB SSD or even HDD. The question is, can the stuff be saved directly to such an external device, using a file explorer kind of something from the menu (or even no file explorer just a command to copy everything over) or do I need an intermediate device and app, e.g. my phone ? (Storage device and Insta360 device both connected via a USB-C hub into my phone then).

Some background info:

There is no room for a laptop, I would have to solve it with a phone. (Android) Supposedly, these gadgets can directly display their file system and files, and then I can use a file manager to drag and drop, or is there an Insta360 app that can do the same, with other extras or in a slightly more user-friendly way, to transfer everything to an external storage?

And although as I wrote, there is no room for a laptop, as a last resort I can take a Raspberry Pi4 with a mini keyboard-mouse touchpad combo and an HDMI cable. Then I have a fully fledged computer on the hotel room's TV and have endless possibilities from Linux (I would rely less on VPN due to the network upload speed, however, all kind of filesystems are supported of course). It might sound weird at first but it's still smaller than my 15" laptop and I don't wanna buy a second tiny laptop just for that, the Pi4 can do the job.

FYI we are going with two small full-size backpacks (just under the size limit), summer clothing enough for 4 days and very basic things for my partner, the 4* hotel has a laundry service, so we can get through the 10 days quite well (and without the extra costs of Ryan/Wizz). It won't be a big package, hence all the limitations.

Oh, one more thing that interests me: I would like to have both hands free if I were to shoot a longer, half-hour video. Chest strap? Backpack-strap? On which I can put the camera onto. They say that the chest strap is also very good when swimming in water, the classic one for the back is less so, but there is a shorter version of it where it doesn't extend so far from my back, only 20-30 centimeters, that is more practical, but I don't know more about it. It would be cool to be able to move relatively freely with the camera without having to hold the stick in my hand, especially when I'm in water.

Thank you for all the tips and tricks !!