Gopro Fusion
Gopro’s ingenious new action cam points everywhere at once, then lets you frame your shots within a 360° panorama afterwards
An all-seeing action cam for your rad holidays
£650 / stuff.tv/fusion Action cams have reached the dizzy heights of 4K, but they’re as useful as a stick-mounted potato if they’re pointing in the wrong direction when something amazing happens.
That’s why Gopro has come up with its next-gen cam, the Fusion. If you thought the Hero5 had an ultra-wide field of view, the Fusion promises 360° capture that misses nothing, wherever you point the thing.
Doesn’t this mean warped fisheye videos that you have to scroll around on your phone? Nope. The Fusion shoots and auto-stitches 5.2K-resolution video from its front and back cameras, then uses software called Overcapture to let you punch out a flat, phone-friendly 1080p frame from within its all-seeing view.
The hardware and image quality are on the money, making this probably the most interesting 360° camera yet that normal(ish) people can afford. Only the software, it turns out, is in need of improvement…
1 Pole position The Fusion is a little bigger than a standard Gopro Hero cam, but you’ll still be able to attach it to whatever you like. As part of the package you get a quick and easy extension pole for getting the camera away from your arms and head, and this doubles as a tripod.
2 Press pack Using the Fusion is dead simple. There’s a power/mode button on the side and a shutter/capture button on the front – that’s it. You press on the mode button to flick between stills, video and timelapse, and you can alter a few parameters in the settings menu.
3 Point proven So, you don’t even have to worry about where you point this cam? Well, that’s true to an extent. But look carefully at your footage and you’ll see iffy areas where the two feeds join – because the lenses go a little soft at the edges, and the stitching itself isn’t perfect.
4 Planetary perspective ‘Overcapture’ tech processes all the visual data from the 360° camera feed and compresses it down into a standard flat format. The most dramatic mode is ‘little planet’, which makes it look as though you’re shooting a tiny sphere from above. 5 Picture picker Fisheye is the other option for Overcapture, looking more like what you’d see from a normal Gopro. At first this will seem like the boring mode, but the ‘little planet’ effect can get gimmicky. Don’t worry – you only choose between these styles in the edit.