Start so I'm a massive loner and I always I always ride by myself so when I use footage like this in my videos I I often get questions about it actually now no surprise I've used a 360° camera for a couple of years and insta 360 actually got in touch to sponsor this one which is really cool now my wife bought me one of their early 360 cameras as a gift a couple years ago and at the time I was using a GoPro Hero 8 to to get kind of b-roll and riding shots so I didn't think I'd Ed that much actually but once I saw the kind of footage you could get out of this thing I just kind of stopped using that GoPro entirely and I've used this thing in nearly every episode since it's just so much easier to get cool looking footage so today a quick look at their latest X4 360 camera which is wicked but importantly I'm going to show you how I kind of rig it up onto the bike and get shots like this this or this super easily my name as always is Luke and welcome back to trace the so Mounting the camera & using selfie stick the basis for mounting this X4 camera it relies on this very standard tripod mount on the bottom well the mount is used on basically every camera ever made including the DSLR that I'm kind of shooting this episode on but yeah it screws directly into this selfie stick for example so pop that in there and just this with the with the selfie stick is the basis for quite a lot of the shots that I use shots like this with the camera at kind of a 2/3 angle out in front it's literally just me holding the camera on a stick under the bars next to the wheel easy peasy and because the camera is quite close to the ground you get a decent feeling of speed even though I'm not traveling very fast at all really another common shot I use is this one where it kind of looks like I'm being followed by a drone and to do that is it's literally just this so Selfie Stick Over the shoulder like so riding with one hand and if you look at the shadow you can kind of tell that's just what it is so yeah no drama pop it over your shoulder boom drone type footage another one if you take the selfie stick and kind of swing it down out in front of you as you're cycling along it's it's a cool effect kind of brings you into shot but yeah as with all these things the selfie stick is completely invisible as well so yeah if I'm bombing around some country lanes or whatever and don't have to worry about traffic I can kind of Swing this thing around and and get some cool shots but what about actually rigging this thing up to the bike well Camera mounting location interestingly I wasn't really aware of this until I started playing around with some of these angles but this camera doesn't actually have to be that far away from you to look like it is let's take this trailing shot as an example it it kind of looks like the camera is about 2 m away but in reality it's actually um let me turn the lights on uh it's it's actually about here maybe just above the rear wheel and it's the sort of let me turn the lights off um it's the same with these shots as well it looks like the camera is quite far away but in reality it's pretty close with this thing it's all about the framing that you can do later on with the footage right and that's absolutely key for stuff like this where I'm navigating heavy traffic obviously if I'm next to cars I can't have a a camera stuck 2 3T out the side right nor can I like wave a pole around I need both hands on the bike to kind of control it safely but I can still pick up shots like this without this camera extending beyond the width of my handlebars actually again it kind of looks like this thing is quite far out right but in reality it's well within my footprint as a rider so I can easily nip through standstill traffic without worrying about this thing kind of hitting anything beside me or getting knocked off or whatever Attaching to the bike so yeah obviously when I'm kind of navigating through traffic I'm I'm not holding on to the selfie stick right so here's the rigging so um yeah I've got the extended selfie pole there with the camera on the end and it's attached to the seat post here with this Mount that's from insta 360 is from their trailing mount kit which I'll uh show you in a second and then I've got this additional Mount here I got this on AliExpress or Ebay like I don't know a couple years back for about 15 20 quid something like that although insta 360 also do one of these kind of braces it against the bike it's nice and secure and if I show you it's difficult to show but it doesn't actually extend beyond the width of the handle bars or my shoulders as I'm riding along now this rig with these with these two mounts it's actually the basis for quite a lot of the shots that I use on the bike because it's quite easy to kind of move it around so for example I'll take this clamp here attach it to the end of the bars have the selfie pole hanging down and then use that clamp there to attach somewhere to the fork to kind of brace it and then I'll have the the camera down here and I can pick up shots like this looking up at me while I'm cycling along yeah those ones are quite nice so for trailing shots on the bike like these ones I used to have this really janky setup that I attached to the bike um using these really so I had a couple of cheap mounts from uh I AliExpress or eBay with this plastic one as well and this really cheap selfie pole that wobbled around all over the place and I tended to use it only on quiet country roads in case something came loose or or went wrong I could well it wouldn't cause any problems really but luckily insta 360 now have a dedicated mount for this and it's much much better so this is the trailing Mount and I've got the official insta 360 selfie pole which is much much better than the really wobbly one that I used to have and then this Mount that I've just showed you so yeah it clamps onto the seat post and it it threads directly into the the selfie Pole right here so that keeps it nice and secure but you get this additional Mount here so it attaches to the bottom of the saddle rails these are oval saddle rails as well fits absolutely fine and then it clamps on here for additional support this is really secure looks really good and you don't have to have the camera very far away to uh kind of make it look like it does as as I explained earlier plus you can also move this clamp down here and then have the pole come up at an angle to get some interesting shots so yeah this is really versatile actually nice and secure and you can get some really interesting shots this way and finally the classic Computer mount mounted to the handlebars right handsfree so yeah I'm using it in this use case to kind of narrate to camera but I know certain Racers like Harry Mack used this style of Mount and a 360 camera to capture his crit races and yeah his Instagram reals are absolutely Bonkers so definitely check him out but yeah it keeps everything really secure up front nothing sticks out too far or wobbles around or anything so this is a great option for really easily capturing some decent ride footage so this new mount comes in a road cycling bundle from insta 360 this one is for a standard Baron stem you just remove the two lower bolts on the face plate and using some extended bolts and two of the spacers that come with it you can get it attached no problem they also do an identical one for an integrated cockpit as well if you got one of those so just sling it underneath with the two bolts easy peasy worth noting too you get mounts for Garmin Wahoo Brighton whatever computer you have really but this X4 camera it's it's the key right and it's it's genuinely really really impressive but I won't go into loads of detail on the specs and the features in this video because there are loads of other reviews that kind of do that much better so I'll give you the headlines and the kind of bits that are important to me and my particular use case so number one this thing is X4 camera use case waterproof and really rugged as well I've already smacked it into the tarmac a couple of times and it's come off absolutely fine the footage that you get out of it is crazy as well I mean it records up to 8K which is ridiculous so you can really zoom in and out and play around with the framing in post I normally record everything in 5.7k actually so slightly lower resolution but um with with with smaller file sizes as well but the footage is still super crispy the stabilization is crazy good as well I remember I had a GoPro Hero 3 back in the day no no no stabilization the footage would kind of shake all over the place but here buttery smooth you can basically stick the camera where you want hit record and get some really clean usable footage the low light performance is also pretty impressive I got these shots at about 8:30 p.m. a few weeks back while the sun was setting and yeah looks really nice in my opinion the UI on the X4 is is really intuitive as well I like the prompts that they use on the menu items so you don't need to look things up all the time now you can review footage quickly on the camera itself but it is pretty limited you can't zoom in and zoom out for example but on the insta 360 app you can scrub through the footage and and play around with it add a color grade or add some metrics like Speed without having to download it locally first which is so useful I think the camera actually creates its own Wi-Fi network which then you're phone connects to through the app so that it can stream the data fast enough but either way it's incredibly impressive that you can get so much done on your phone without having to kind of download gigabytes of data locally to play with it so yeah you can get quite a lot done on the app actually especially if you're dealing in kind of 9 by 16 vertical short form content then yeah you'll get it pretty much all done there but I tend to do the majority of the edits on the desktop app and it's a really clean simple UI so very straightforward to bring your footage in kind of cut the bit you want Frame It Up color grade it if you want and then just export it yeah really really straightforward workflow on that one and it's never crashed on me that desktop app which is um more than I can say for Premier Pro anyway the battery life on the X4 is also really strong and interestingly the accessory ecosystem is vast which sort of adds to the legitimacy in a way lens guards backpack Mount dash cam Mount helmet Mount chest Mount car mount vertical Mount screen protectors dive case mic adapter even a cold shoe and there are loads of others too in fact I use the mic adapter and the cold shoe for my setup I use these Road wireless mics and it keeps the receiver out of the way right next to the camera so it doesn't appear in shot either which is really cool and I wanted to quickly show Quality of mounts and accessories you the quality of the accessories is really really high so I used to always buy kind of cheap mounts to strap my GoPro to my bike ones like this right it's it's all made of plastic and it looks fine but once you start clamping stuff down and get it secure it always snaps like you can see that white residue from superglue where I've had to kind of glue this whole top piece back together same with these little mounts I've had so many of these right and you can see all that glue on there because these just shatter once you start tightening them down even these ones right which are kind of made of cast aluminium the original Star knobs here to kind of tighten this whole assembly down they stripped out after I tightened them down a few times so uh yeah both of these have had to be replaced these on the other hand really really really nice I mean take this seat post clamp from that trailing Mount that I showed you just now it's basically all made of machined aluminium and there's nice little touches like rubber pads adhere to where it's actually going to clamp onto your frame so you don't scaff up or Mar the paint workor you can even Swap this uh rear piece out here with this one in case you're running a slightly more profiled Arrow seat post I mean this clamp here from that same kit all machined aluminium here including this little tightening knob and all the plastic bits are they're really high quality glass fiber reinforced plastic so it should be nice and durable kind of makes a change after dealing with all these cheap mounts in the past and I've got to show you this quickly so this is a a wireless remote that you can get for this thing so say this is attached to the back of the bike right I don't want to have to get on and off the bike the whole time to stop and start recording so you can get this thing and I'll show you is it's connected up to the camera so it's almost like a smartwatch and you can press this here it connects to the camera and it gives you a live feed from the camera so you can see me there and can I can I wave yeah look at that so you can make sure your shot is set up properly and then once you're in here you can do things like uh change the the the resolution and the frame rate that you're working with and you can also go in and change it from uh video to to photo or whatever you want on the Fly and then you can hit this button on top start recording or stop recording obviously no SD card in in camera but yeah just in general the accessories you can get for this thing are Just A Cut Above standard but honestly this X4 with Wrap-up a few Choice accessories it it's leveled up my ride along footage from this which I used to get with a GoPro and like a selfie stick to this I mean it's Bonkers really the kind of quality and variety of footage you can get riding out and about by yourself so yeah if you're a solo Creator like me or maybe you just want to get some nice footage of you and your mates riding around or maybe just riding by yourself like highways do um then uh yeah like I legitimately swear by this thing it's an absolutely key bit of equipment for me to have and and do what I do around here so yeah if you want to check them out they've put a cycle bundle together actually so you get the X4 this obligatory kind of extending selfie stick you get some lens guards one of those computer mounts that I showed you earlier to kind of attach the camera to the front of your bike and you also get one of these which is a kind of rubber lens cap cover that you put over the top and that means that you can have this in your back pocket and kind of not worry about scuffing up the lenses so yeah pick up that one or two other mounts and you've basically got my outdoor filming setup also quick one the first 15 people to use my link in in the description get some premium lens guards thrown in for free as well which is cool so yeah uh enjoy anyway I hope that helps you rig up some cool shots out and about on your bike and massive thanks to insta 360 for for kind of supporting I was using their stuff for years prior to this partnership and it feels like I have a sort of air of legitimacy around me now that I've got like insta 360 as a sponsor um yeah anyway uh thanks for sticking with and I'll see you next time Bonus clip - Frame issue ciao it's the bonus clip time this bike behind me right some of you might remember at the end of the last episode I mentioned that well I had a problem with it so I bought this from this company OG Evin and when it got to me it had clearly been damaged in shipping and I found a small crack on one of the inner layers of carbon inside the down tube so I had to go at fixing it uh well I guess more precisely me and my brother had to go fixing it and that episode will be up uh the the next episode I think actually but um yeah it did not go to plan at all and to give you some idea of what the repair hair inside here might look like because I'm well it's it's kind of Road worthy at the moment so it appears to be holding but to give you an idea of what this repair might look like I'll show you this so this is a frame that I got from a friend of mine that works at a local bike shop it's a canondale that they had to warranty so they had to chop the frame in half so in the down tube here we kind of put one of these uh carbon fiber patches so this is the same sort of patch that we put inside this down tube but obviously here we've got Direct access right on this one we only had access through this hole and this hole so this is exactly the same sort of carbon and and resin patch that we've got in in the Big Frame up there but obviously it was a lot easier to place this one and get everything nice and smooth and I've attached this kind of popsicle stick on the end to kind of assess how how strongly it's welded in there and it is really well adhered but um yeah things weren't quite as simple for for this Frame basically ev Everything went wrong and right now the fix appears to be holding but um I'm sure when some of you see uh the fix and the the process we went through to get there you'll um I'm not sure you'll agree it's it's roadworthy but yeah really really interesting episode so uh tune in for that one and uh I guess I'll I'll see you then right ciao