The sensor supports 13.5 stops of dynamic range, which is particularly good for shooting in mixed sunlight and shade, and in low-light scenes. Like the first Ace Pro, Pure Video mode is what you want for low-light video. Insta360 has increased the maximum frame rate to 60 fps in pure video mode, which is great for slowing things down in low light.
Low light is where I think the Ace Pro 2 excels better than anything else on the market. In reviewing test footage from both, I found that the Ace Pro 2 did a slightly better job of preserving detail than the DJI Osmo Action 5, which is much closer. Blow both of them GoPro Hero 13 Black Out of the water. If you want to shoot at night, then a GoPro.
Some of the impressive night and HDR capabilities can be attributed to the dual-chip processing architecture, which splits tasks between the primary and secondary imaging chipsets. One of these chips is the same one that was in the Ace Pro, but it’s now joined by a second chip, which can handle things like denoising, dynamic range, and so on. Whatever is going on under the hood, the results are very good.
That said, Insta360 has significantly increased the saturation in the default settings, making it worse than the previous model. Maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t like oversaturated video, but to me, the default color saturation mode in Ace Pro 2 has a hyperreal quality only Jean Baudrillard could love. Maybe it’s just me.
There are two new color modes to shoot with, though, and they’re both good — Leica Natural and Leica Vivid. When I wasn’t shooting in log I shot in Leica Natural, which is less saturated and produces a more realistic image, at least to my eye.
The Ace Pro 2 is, to my knowledge, the first action camera to do something I’ve done myself for years — add a windscreen over the microphone. Yes, I often add a bit of felt or even some extra “fur”. dead cat On the mic input of my action camera. It’s not perfect, but it helps, especially on a light windy day. Well, the Ace Pro 2 includes a nice wind guard with a bit of foam to cover the mic and it works. Shocking I know. Audio Engineering 101 wasn’t lying. The advantage here is that you can leave off digital wind-noise reduction, which never works well in my experience, and still record great audio in light winds.
