If you’ve ever consideredusing 360 cameras to make training or educational videos (or just for fun) but were intimidated by the cost and apparentcomplexity of the gear, fear not. A 360 video studio can be affordable,easy-to-use, and, surprisinglycompact. While you certainly can spend a fortuneon cameras, mics, and other gear, you don’t need an extraordinary budget tomake extraordinary 360 videos.

My girlfriend and I just spent three weeks inCuba shooting a documentary using 360 cameras on a shoestring budget. Here’s apic of our entire mobile 360 studio.

Below, I’ll explain each piece of gear in moredetail. We often didn’t bring it all with us on our daily shoots for variousreasons, but that didn’t matter. Wejust used the gear we had. For example, our VuzeVR camera is fantastic, but the Ricoh Theta S fits in my pocket. As a result,sometimes we only had the Theta with us, and I still got a lot of greatimpromptu shots with it. When higher-quality audio was important (i.e., forinterviews, recording live music, etc.), we’d whip out our pocket-sized ZoomH1n recorders and an inexpensive lav mic or two.

Our mobile 360documentary studio

Vuze VR Camera

The Vuze VR 360 camera has eight fisheye lenses and four microphones along the perimeterof its flat body. It looks a little like a UFO (see pic below) and, thus, tendsto attract attention from passersby. It’s affordable and compact but stillshoots great video and 360 audio (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Vuze VR 360camera

Ricoh Theta S

The RicohTheta S 360 camera has two fisheye lensesand one mic. Its roughly the size and shape of a slim remote control, so iteasily fits in your pocket. It’s even more affordable and a lot smaller thanthe Vuze VR, though the video and audio aren’t quite as good. Note that Ricoh recentlycame out with the Ricoh Theta V, which we haven’t tried yet.

Here’s the Vuze VR (background) and Ricoh ThetaS (foreground) in action in the mountains near Viñales, Cuba (Figure 2).

Figure 2: VuzeVR (background) and Ricoh Theta S (foreground) 

Zoom H1n Handy Recorder

The Zoom H1n Handy Recorder records audio with twobuilt-in mics, or it accepts audio input from an outside mic (but not bothoptions at the same time). It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, and thecharge from two AA batteries lasts approximately 10 hours or more of recordingtime with the highest sound quality settings. We needed two of these to recordaudio from our two lav mics.

Aputure A.lav lavalier microphones

The Aputure A.lav mics clip to shirt collars and capture much better audio than the micsbuilt into the Vuze VR and Ricoh Theta S, albeit on a single channel. We wentwith corded mics because they don’t need their own batteries and aresignificantly less expensive than wireless mics. When making our videos, westill use the Vuze VR or Ricoh Theta S audio for ambient background audio in 360,but turned down to, say, 30 percent of full volume. We then add the single channelfrom the lav mic at 100 percent volume for clearer voices without the unwantedbackground noise.

MeFOTO BackPacker Air Tripod

The MeFOTOBackPacker Air Tripod weighs only two pounds,extends to 59.5 inches, and folds up to 10.4 inches (small enough to fit in adaypack), making it perfect for travel.

Insignia 6” Flexible Tripod

My Insignia 6” Flexible Tripodworks well for the Ricoh Theta S for tabletop shots. It also makes a perfecthandle for filming while walking around, reducing thumb visibility at thebottom of the video field of view.

Western Digital My Passport external hard drives

360 video files are large. We filled up ourlaptops quickly. Uploading files to cloud storage every day wasn’t realistic inCuba, given our limited access to very slow internet. We were also worriedabout theft and breakage. Thus, we brought four 4TB Western Digital My Passport external hard drives. One or two would have sufficed, but we wanted backups for ourbackups.

Poweradd Pilot X7 20,000mAh Power Bank

Our Poweradd Pilot X7 20,000mAh Power Banks allowed us to repeatedly recharge our many devices in the field.There were some days when we had no access to outlets, and our Poweradd PilotX7s were lifesavers.

Razer Blade Stealth laptop

The Razer Blade Stealth laptop islight and slim enough that it travels well, and yet is powerful enough toeasily view and edit 360 videos if needed. It also allowed us to quicklydownload the massive Vuze VR 360 video files.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3

The tiny, Windows OS Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet/laptop workswell for transferring audio, 2D videos, and other file types to storage. Havingtwo computers meant less time emptying SD cards each evening and more timesleeping.

Insignia USB SD card reader

We brought two Insignia USB SD card readers. Wewouldn’t have been able to download the Vuze VR and Zoom H1n files to ourcomputers without them, and they expedited downloading from our handheld videoand point-and-shoot cameras too.

Canon Vixia HF R800

The Canon Vixia HF R800 is a compact handheld2D camcorder. We shot a few videos with it so that we wouldn’t be limited to360 videos. Plus, its long battery life and smaller file sizes mean we couldshoot much longer videos than we could with the 360 cameras. It saved us on acouple longer shoots, though we could have gotten along fine without it.

Sony Cyber-shot G and Canon Powershot A4000ISpoint and shoot cameras

We’ll include 2D photos within our 360 videos toillustrate points, scenes, etc. more vividly. The Sony slightly outperformedthe Canon in terms of imagequality and speed of photos, though in fairness, it is a newer camera.

Foval Power Step Down 220V to 110V VoltageConverter

The Foval Power Step Down converts Cuba’s many220 volt outlets to 110 volts, which our American gadgets require. It doublesas a surge protector, which is necessary in the developing world. In additionto two standard three-prong electrical plug ports, it includes four USB ports.We used them all, as we had a lot of gadgets to recharge every night.

Multiple SD and Micro-SD cards, camera cases,and USB cords, as well as one extension cord

Studio on thego

All of this gear filled about half of a singlesmall daypack-sized backpack. Over three weeks in Cuba, we shot about 30 hoursof 360 video and 3,000 photos. Much of it turned out great, even though we’reboth still new to 360 photography. I’d post some clips, but we’ve still got alot of editing left to do, as we’ve only been home a few days.

Here’s the backpack we carried it all in. I’mholding the Vuze VR camera on a tripod. That’s the Hotel Nacional de Cuba inthe background (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Allour gear is in that backpack, except for the Vuze VR camera I’m holding on atripod. Hotel Nacional de Cuba in the background. 

We filmed sunset on the Malecón in Havana withthe Ricoh Theta S (Figure 4).

Figure 4:Filming sunset on the Malecón in Havana with the Ricoh Theta S

We’re excited to create still more projects.We’ve got our mobile 360 video studio ready to go on a moment’s notice. If wecan pull it off in Cuba—a lovely country, but one with severely limited accessto modern technology and internet—we can make it work anywhere.