How to enable HDR on your Insta 360 ONE X

HDR is important, especially if you are creating virtual tours of properties and you are trying to get the best quality of images in the shortest timespan. If you are the lucky owner of an Insta360 ONE X, you will be happy to hear that this nifty little camera comes with a built in HDR function. But you have to make sure it’s switched on before you start shooting! So here’s how to enable HDR on your Insta360 ONE X:

As always, for those wanting the quick version:

1. Connect to the camera with your smartphone
2. Open the Insta App and click on the camera to start making a picture
3. Make sure the HDR is enabled in the bottom row
4. Make the shot
5. Click on the small image icon in the left bottom corner
6. Wait for the processing to finish
7. Your image has now been converted to HDR

Then read here how you can transfer your images from your Insta360 ONE X camera to your computer to start creating your virtual tour.

For those that would like some more info on the above, please see the instructions below with images:

1. Connecting your Insta360 ONE X camera to your iPhone:

Go to your settings > Wifi Settings > connect to the Insta Camera

2. Open the Insta360 App and click on the camera to start making a new picture:

(if this is your first time using this camera, this screen will be empty) 

3. Make sure the HDR is enabled in the bottom row

4. Make the shot by clicking on the large yellow button

5. When the shot is done, click on the small image icon in the left bottom corner

6. Wait for the processing to finish (this can take a while depending on how dark your images are)

7. All done! Now your images are converted to HDR and you can continue your workflow!

It is important to note that you can also wait with the conversion to HDR after you have taken all your shots. This way your shoot is not interrupted and if you do a lot of these, you might want to make sure you have enough battery on your phone left!

So our suggestion is that you take your images first and then you process them afterwards, preferably with your phone plugged in somewhere.

This is currently the only way to convert your images to HDR. You can’t convert them after you imported them to your desktop and the Insta360 Studio for desktop currently does not support it either. However, we have been told by an Insta360 Executive that they are planning to introduce this feature in the desktop studio soon, which will make the whole process a lot less time (and phone battery) consuming.

Why do I have to do all this?

Your question has been noted! It is actually not a bad thing that the process is like this, if you are a professional photographer that is… For the rest of us it seems all a little bit tedious…

What the Insta360 does is it takes 3 different images with different exposures, one dark, light and in between.  The HDR processing then puts these images together to get to ONE perfect image, taking the best bits out of each of the 3 images so to speak. This is why you can shoot inside a room and still get the views outside through the window (try doing that with a normal camera… )

Professional photographers would rather make their own choice on what is the best part of each image, so instead of processing the images with the HDR Insta360 provides, they would like to download the 3 separate raw images and work on them manually. Granted, a Pro will probably get even better results than the Auto HDR, but for those that just want a pretty picture, HDR is plenty satisfactory and then some!

So now you know how to enable HDR on your Insta360 ONE X camera, and why you need it.

As we said before, in 99% of the cases we really recommend making sure your HDR is on for your shoot. It really does make a difference and can add extra value to your virtual tour.

If you want to know how to transfer your images from your camera to your desktop, then read this blog, and to learn how to create a virtual tour using your Insta360 ONE X images, head over to this one!