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Insta360 has updated their lightweight foldable gimbal, and they've sent me one to try out, the Insta360 Flow Pro. Will the Insta360 Flow Pro help you to become a video creator pro?
The Insta360 Flow was already my personal favorite fold-up gimbal, but now they've added some nice extra touches, which I think you're going to like, especially if you're using an iPhone for video creation. Let's look at the new features.
The Flow Pro is now Apple DockKit enabled. What is Apple DockKit? Last year, Apple unveiled a new DockKit framework for swivel and tilt iPhone stands. But simply, DockKit is a tracking system native to your iPhone. When paired with DockKit-compatible devices like the Flow Pro, you can track people as they move around and keep them in the frame. Of course, gimbals have been doing this for a while now, but with this, you don't need to use the Insta360 app. You can use an app that you're maybe more familiar with or that has the features that you need that you don't get in the Insta360 app. I mean, basically, we're talking about live streaming here. DockKit enabled means you can use the native camera app on your iPhone, or maybe apps like FaceTime, Instagram, TikTok, Canva, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and that kind of thing. But you are going to need an iPhone 12 or later model with iOS 17.4 or later installed.
So, for this to work, you're going to need to connect the gimbal using NFC pairing, and that actually brings me to the next feature, which is one-tap pairing. The Flow Pro now allows you to connect your gimbal with one tap. This uses NFC technology, so you will need to have that enabled on your phone. NFC stands for Near Field Communication, and it's used for things like making contactless payments. In this case, it's being used to pair your phone to the Flow Pro. Here I'm using the iPhone 15 Pro. Place the iPhone so the top is near the pan motor of the gimbal. You get a pop-up window, and then just tap connect. And after you've done this, your phone is always going to remember the device, and the next time, it'll just connect automatically.
I can show you how this works on Instagram. Now that I've connected using NFC pairing, open Instagram and then just click on live. You can see that it immediately picks me up and it starts tracking. There's no need to press any buttons or draw any boxes or anything like that. Now, if you want to start or stop tracking again, you can just press the trigger.
Another thing exclusive to the Flow Pro is the ring light around the top of the pan motor. When your phone is connected to the Flow Pro, this will be solid green, and when it's tracking a subject, this light is going to flash. I do think it's nice to have an indicator light that's so bold and it's just easy to see. I mean, you know, you probably don't need it, but I just think this is nice design, and I'm definitely a bit of a sucker for stuff like that. But actually, if this is not for you, or maybe you just want to save a bit of battery usage, you can actually turn this off. Open the app, go into settings, under gimbal settings, you will find a toggle switch for the ring light.
When tracking a person, the Insta360 Flow Pro can rotate 360 degrees and it can just keep going round and round forever, infinitely. So you could put it on a table, for example. Oh, for example, you could set it up on a table, maybe for a conference call or something, and you'll be able to move around the room as much as you want. With other gimbals, you might find the rotation is restricted. For example, the DJI Osmo Mobile 6 can only pan a certain amount before it has to stop. And even if you don't use the full 360 degrees, it means that you don't have to worry about which way the gimbal is facing. I mean, when you're live streaming, there's already enough things to deal with, isn't there? So this is just one less thing to worry about. You can move around as much as you want. It doesn't help with the sound problems, of course.
You can still employ the Insta360 Flow Pro native tracking using the Insta360 app, and this has now been updated to what they call AI-powered Deep Track 3.0. To start tracking using the app, enable it by tapping the gesture button and switching to tracking and record. Hold up the palm of your hand, and the app is going to lock onto your face and it's going to start tracking. And then just use the same gesture to stop tracking. There are two other ways: either draw a box over the object to track, or tap the Flow Pro trigger once. And once it is tracking, the ring light starts flashing green. With the new tracking, the Insta360 app is going to remember what it's tracking, even if that person disappears, and then it'll start tracking them again when they reappear.
The Flow Pro will also track animals. So if you want to capture your dog or your cat or any other pet running around, you can get it to do that. And if your pet is running around and the gimbal is struggling to keep up with them, then go into the app and change the tracking sensitivity to "too sensitive."
So, if you want to learn how to shoot more cinematic video with your smartphone gimbal, think about taking my course on Patreon, and you'll find a link in the description.
If you're an iPhone user, then you have the option to use the new MagSafe mounting system. This is a separate purchase, but what you get is a magnetic mount which sticks to the back of your iPhone. But obviously, only MagSafe iPhones are going to do that. So that's the iPhone 12 or later. And what you do is place this rubber side onto the back of your iPhone. The pointed end needs to be facing towards the charging port, and then you just move it around until it kind of clicks into place. And make sure that this line here is parallel with the side of your phone, and you should actually also feel it click into place. And if it isn't in place, you're probably going to get a little message in the Insta360 app to tell you that it's not quite right, and you can readjust this. Now, it mounts easily to the gimbal, and you're ready to go. When you dismount your phone, I found that you can choose to keep the MagSafe mount on the back of your iPhone, or you can leave the mount on the gimbal. It's up to you, really. And your iPhone is going to be attached just as securely as if you were using the standard magnetic clamp.
So that's all the extra stuff that you get with the Insta360 Flow Pro compared to the regular version, and I'd say that this is still my recommended fold-up gimbal. I do think that this is an underrated gimbal, but sometimes, you know, a device takes a while to break through.
Here's three things that I like about the Insta360 Flow. Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time working with gimbals, I don't know, but I do find the design of the Flow is a little bit different. I am a fan of the Smart Wheel control too. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've got the hang of this wheel, I do find it's quicker and it's easier to use than other gimbals. And I also just like the way the device reacts. Even just powering it on, the gimbal kind of snaps into position. And when you power it off, it doesn't just go, you know, floppy. It actually turns the phone towards you, so it's easier to dismount as well. There's other nice little touches, the way it adjusts the movement of the gimbal for hyperlapses to make them smoother, for example. I just don't know of any other gimbal that does that. Things like when you tap the home button, the gimbal automatically switches to vertical so you can read the page. For me, that just shows that the Insta360 developers really think about giving the best experience. Yeah, quite often gimbal makers, they only add features if they think it's going to be a major selling point, but this is just a nice little touch that doesn't make the gimbal shoot better video, but it makes the experience of using it more enjoyable.
The Insta360 Flow has an all-in-one design, which basically means you don't need to carry around those mini tripod legs. Instead, they extend from the handle. The arm extends as well, giving you extra distance for selfies, and of course, this extending hand offers extra shot choices. You can shoot an overhead shot and then angle it down, and another one that I like to do is the low-slung shot and then angle it up. But there's all kinds of shots you can get using this extending arm. There's also a cold shoe mount for a microphone, for example, like the Rode Wireless Pro. And as well, the Flow acts as a power bank, which you can use to charge your phone should you need to do so.
So, another thing I like about the Insta360 Flow is that it really is quick to get started with. You just mount the phone, twist to open the gimbal, and the Flow auto-balances and auto-powers on. And if you set it up right, the Insta360 app notification pops up, so you can just tap that, and then you're ready to go.
So, the Smart Wheel is one of the more unique features of the Flow, and all you do to change modes is swipe around. You can see the light here moves from left to right. So you swipe clockwise to move forward. So we're going from follow mode to pan-follow mode. Swipe again, we're now in POV view, so all axes engaged. You can even roll. And we swipe counterclockwise, it goes back. So it's something that I like. And if you want to change the modes in the app, like video, photo, and so on, you just double-tap either the record button or the switch button. So there you go, from video to photo. If you want to go the other way, so it does find out that works really nicely. You've got the record button, switch button for switching from front to rear, but also if you double-tap this, you go from horizontal to vertical. And the bottom is the power button. If you just tap it once, it tells you how much battery is left. So we've got two lights, means it's kind of low. If we tap it twice, it goes into sleep mode. Just tap once again to wake it up. You can actually change the way this swiping works. You can do it in reverse, so that the swiping changes the modes in the app, and the tapping changes the gimbal modes. You just go here, and where it says custom, you've got option A at the moment, which is the one I was showing you, but I can switch to option B, and that just basically reverses it. So now when I tap, it will change the gimbal mode instead, and when I swipe, it will change the app modes. So that's how to use the Smart Wheel.
So, it wouldn't be an Insta360 device if it didn't shoot some kind of 360 content, would it? The Insta360 Flow Pro, like the Flow, can shoot 360 photos, but you can't use the MagSafe clamp. You have to use the standard clamp because it has to go the wrong way around, or it has to go with the clamp over the screen like this, and it has to go quite low down on the phone. And it actually gives you a little guide on the screen, so it shows you roughly where to put it, about there. And, yeah, let's try this first of all. Go to Pano Photo mode, and now we need to switch it into the 360 mode, and place it somewhere where you think you're going to get a nice 360 photo. Press go. You get five seconds to get into position if you want to be in it. So the Insta360 Flow now takes a series of pictures, and then it's going to stitch them all together to create a 360-degree view. And you'll be able to look at that in your phone in the 360 app, for example. You can look at it and you can swipe around and you can see the whole view, and you can even upload it to platforms like Facebook, and people can experience it in 360 degrees. So when it's finished processing it, you can export it from the app as either a 360 photo, so you can swipe around, or as a reframed photo, then it will just be a 2D, you won't be able to swipe it around.
So let's try creating a motion lapse with the Flow Pro. So we go to Time Lapse in the modes here, and you want it to set it to custom track. If you can have it fixed angle, which means it's not going to move. So we've got interval, duration, one second is fine, record length, 10 minutes, fine. Left to right, right to left. But I want to use custom track. And when you switch it to that, you now get these four boxes. So then we use the joystick to move the gimbal to the first position. I'm going to start there, and I'm also while we're here, I'm just going to lock exposure by pressing and holding on the screen. Now I'm going to move to the next position, just using the joystick. Tap the second position, and now we're ready to record. So we press the record button on the gimbal, let go so that you're not wobbling it anymore, and now it does this little test first. It just does a little test run-through, and now it begins. So we're going to come back in like 10 minutes and see what we got. So you can see at the bottom, it's coming up now, we've got 9 minutes 48 seconds, that's how long it's been recording. And on the right, we have the time that we're going to get, that's how long the time lapse is going to be. That's coming up to 20 seconds, and now we're there. So it's finished. We just tap the gallery button, and let's see what we got. Straight away, it's there. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Would have been nicer to have some more dramatic clouds, but it's pretty good, isn't it? It's done a good job.
Here's a little tip: if you want to get the smoothest video possible with your gimbal and your smartphone, think about switching to the ultrawide camera. So here I'm just using the native app of my iPhone, going to switch to the ultrawide, and I'm going to switch to 60 frames per second, 4K. And then when I edit, I'm going to slow it down to 30 frames per second. You can also slow it down to 24 frames per second if you're going for the movie look. But with the ultrawide, it takes out even more of the wobbles and the footsteps. So I'm in, I'm going to put it in follow mode, so the F on the gimbal, so that allows me to angle it up. Now I'm going to start recording. So the record button on the gimbal triggers the native app there, cuz they're connected. And now I'm just going to start moving slowly, and I'm going to circle around, and you should get really nice smooth footage, even though I'm on pretty rough ground here. The moment I'm just filming a tree, but you could use this for things like buildings, like any kind of architecture, big architecture. You need the ultrawide anyway to get it into shot, you know, you get really smooth footage like this, and much less of that kind of bobbing up and down.
So I've already made a full tutorial about this gimbal. Well, it was actually about the previous version. So all the stuff that I haven't covered in this video, you can catch in the other video. So if you want to learn everything that you need to know about the Insta360 Flow or the Insta360 Flow Pro, then check that video out now.