I have a baby coming and I want a camera I can use to record home movies.

If you want the best video quality a great option is something like a Gh5 from LUMIX, or an actual camcorder – except I don’t want to carry a lot of kit day to day. I’m not going to bust out a full on camcorder when my kid is just going for a walk or on a grocery store run.

I want stabilized video, clean audio, and decent low light performance. I want the camera to be – ideally under $500 because this is a camera I want to be able to throw in a pocket and not care about if it gets stolen, full of pocket lint, covered in sweat, and baby grime, etc.

The obvious choice is an action cam but every single one of the main brands has major issues.

GoPro has the best colors and build quality out of the box. The problem is they have garbage audio, poor mic pairing choices, and the company is on the verge of bankruptcy which would make warranty claims an issue and would potentially cause the camera to brick when the app no longer works.

DJI is a Chinese military contractor. Their products are great but they 1) are banned from the google play store 2) are banned from importing new products 3) cannot honor their warranty claims in the US at all. Their app requires vast permissions and dji was caught collecting sensitive information about users including their religious affiliations.

Insta360‘s camera options are glitchy, their hardware is underwhelming. Video samples from sponsored reviewers looks incredible at first but you can see quite a lot of noise and computational photography “slop”. Comparing their Ace Pro 2 to the DJI Action 6 and there is no comparison. The DJI has a much larger sensor, a color accurate screen, built in storage, a variable aperture, 10 bit color compared to 8 bit – the difference is 16 million shades in 8bit and 1.07 billion shades in 10 bit.

The flip screen on the insta360 seems cool at first until you realize some major downsides. It makes the camera a lot thicker, and bulkier, it also can break easier because it has a hinge, and it also lags when using it while you have stabilization on – which is the whole freaking point of using a camera with a tiny sensor in the first place.

Then there are the gimble cams – these are cameras that are stabilized on a small built in gimble. These cameras are notoriously fragile if dropped and despite the name cannot be dropped into a pocket without risk of damage.

DJI makes the pocket 3 which is pretty good, but you still have the warranty, app, and privacy concerns.

Insta360 now has the Luna Ultra and for $1000 with the microphones is one of the most expensive options. The expense is also a concern due to the fragility and the size of this camera. It’s enormous for a small camera, much too large to carry in the case in a pocket. You’ll need to carry a separate bag. For a vacation, this is no problem but for day to day memory recording – not the idea solution. I’m not going to carry it if it doesn’t slip into a pocket.

Insta360 aggressively markets their cameras through influencers and it’s almost impossible to find a non-paid camera shill.

I bought the DJI Osmo Action 6

The warranty claims may be convoluted with people importing gray market units from overseas, you need to use the DJI app to register the camera but after that you’re good to go.

The action 6 is a lot worse than the action 4 in daylight and much better in low light. I found a filmmaker using the osmo action 6 and it seems the problem is that in daylight with stabilization on auto the camera wants to boost shadows – and stabilization requires a high shutter speed, so the algorithm in the camera boosts the iso into the nether reaches of the heavens and tries to cheat it with hdr and noise reduction and digital sharpening which makes the footage look like ass.

If you use less aggressive stabilization, manually set iso and shutter speed and accept slightly underexposed image – you can retrieve shadows in post thanks to the 10 bit sensor. This adds complexity and time for manual processing but the outcome is that this is essentially a mini cinema camera that had amazing quality and production value in a very small form factor.

Overall I think any of the older action models including the 4 would have been adequate but I went with the 6 specifically for it’s variable aperture and built in film tones which in theory could cut processing time, but we’ll have to see if it’s possible with DJI’s problematic heavy handed algorithmic image processing.

The variable aperture is actually a pretty big deal as at its narrower limit it shortens the minimum focal distance, creates a sharper image naturally, and helps keep shutter speeds lower in brighter light when ISO is already set to the lowest setting.

On the wider end, it creates background separation (bokeh, with the right attachment – the macro lens), lets in a lot more light in low light situations, and keeps noise down by allowing me to set the camera to a lower iso in low light situations.

It also uses a square sensor which allows me to create smooth camera movement in post like pan/tilts or shoot vertical video and wide video at the same time – (but it does crop in).