meant for self-shooting content creation – Credit: insta360Insta360, known for its splendid webcams and action cams (and for helping to incubate a new camera drone brand called Antigravity), brought along a familiar face for its latest launch of the Insta360 Luna Ultra: Leica, one of the world’s foremost camera brands.The Luna Ultra, a gimbaled pocket camera, is made for content creators who don’t have an entire production crew’s worth of camera operators behind me. Rather than piece together a whole camera rig that, once assembled, is so bulky and heavy that it requires a second person to hold it, the $770 Luna Ultra packs everything needed to shoot up to 8K video into a one-handed grip that can be comfortably held at arm’s length by the presenter on screen.a gimbal for vloggers(opens in a new window)Insta360Luna Ultra(opens in a new window)Available at Insta360Buy Now(opens in a new window)“So what’s a gimbal?” you may be wondering. It’s a ball-like part that connects the camera itself to the grip, where the controls live. The gimbal has an electrical motor that allows it to rotate not quite 360 degrees, but on three axes. As the camera operator moves, the gimbal smooths out the movements so that the camera—and the video it records—isn’t bouncing around like a beach ball going down a staircase. Like so much these days, it does so partly thanks to AI-tracking that can automatically track subjects during scenes.Gimbals were once the preserve of seriously expensive professional camera equipment. These days a person vlogging (video blogging) their own YouTube series or recording their walk through a city, for example, can get the same sort of smooth video that used to be only found in Hollywood productions.Moving quickly introduces a lot of bobbing and shaking, ordinarily. As an avid mountain climber and hiker I’ve watched a lot of self-shot video of people without gimbals or with inadequate gimbals bouncing around to where the video was almost unwatchable. A good gimbal can take care of that.But a gimbal isn’t just for high-octane pursuits like that, either. Even calm shoots where you’re presenting on camera and walking slowly, or even standing still, can be challenging to keep perfectly steady. Don’t believe me? Look at any non-pro video shot 15 years ago, before gimbals were common. Hands shake and tremble, especially when they’ve been holding up a piece of equipment long enough to tire them out. The Luna Ultra’s gimbal will eliminate that, so it’ll look silky smooth no matter how tired you arm gets by film take number 12.The Standout Technical FeaturesCredit: insta360You can detach the Luna Ultra’s 2″ OLED touchscreen to make it work as a remote monitor up to 20 meters away (about 66 feet), so that you can shoot your video while a partner monitors the live video feed. Or you can take the director’s reins yourself and monitor the video while a friend works the Luna Ultra.Leica provides the Summicron telephoto lens with up to a 6x mechanical zoom, meaning no loss of image quality, which can be doubled up to 12x through a digital zoom. Digital zoom allows for even more long-reach zooming, but at the cost of some image sharpness.The lens is a 1″ 8K model that supports up to 8K-resolution streaming at 30 frames per second (fps) in Dolby Vision and 4K resolution at up to 120 fps for slow-motion shooting. Recording at 4K in 60 fps is also an option. Leica steps in here, too, to provide Leica color modes and master-grade filters that maintain rich highlights without blowing out the bright whites and lights through overexposure, as well as shadow and color detail.The Logistics of ShootingThe Luna Ultra syncs directly with the Insta360 Mic Pro for picking up audio at a distance, in case you don’t want to rely on the three microphones built into the Luna Ultra’s handheld grip or the one mic built into the detachable touchscreen.The Luna Ultra will run for up to four hours before you need to recharge it via USB-C charger. If you need to get back up and filming quickly, you can get 80% of the battery recharged in 23 minutes flat.Although the Luna Ultra already comes with an internal storage capacity of 47 GB, you have the option to install a microSD memory card of up to 1 TB for long stretches of shooting. Recording 4K and, especially, 8K video gobbles up memory quickly, so I’d recommend having a few microSD cards for long stretches of shooting.(opens in a new window)Insta360Luna Ultra(opens in a new window)Available at Insta360Buy Now(opens in a new window)The post Show the World Your Pretty Face With the Leica-Engineered Insta360 Luna Ultra Pocket Camera appeared first on VICE.