Insta360 Luna Ultra Review: I Tested One of 2026’s Most Exciting Cameras in Alaska

What makes the Insta360 Luna Ultra so exciting isn’t the fact that you can pull off this face plate and have full remote control and a view of what the camera’s seeing. It’s so much more than that. But first, I’ve got to go across this lake to talk about all the things that make this camera, I think, one of the most exciting cameras of 2026.

Just so we’re clear, Insta360 did send the Luna to me about a month ago, but they’re not paying me or sponsoring this video in any other way, and they don’t get to see it before it’s launched. And there are, of course, affiliate links down in the description that don’t cost you anything extra, but they do help me create content like this on this channel.

A Windy Audio Test and the Mic Pro

I don’t know if you can tell right now, but it’s pretty dang windy out here, which might be a challenge for a kayak across this 3-mile lake. But if you have the Mic Air or the Mic Pro, turn it on real quick, and really, you can get some incredibly clean audio even if the wind is blowing pretty dang hard. We’re definitely going to be using this a bunch today as we head out across this lake.

The Detachable Face Plate Remote

One of the coolest things is the fact that this little remote detaches, and it is the first among any cameras like this. Being able to control the camera, the tracking, and even get the audio from out here is super cool — although the audio probably doesn’t sound great because there’s a little microphone in here, and there’s a lot of wind and a lot of other noise around me. But I also have the Mic Pro recording internally, so I can always use that clean audio, which is probably what you’re hearing right now.

The detachable remote has about 1 hour of battery life, maybe a little more than that, maybe an hour 15, but that’s not even the coolest feature.

Lossless Zooms and All the Focal Lengths

The coolest feature of this camera is the fact that you can get these lossless zooms. Right now I’m 20 or 30 feet away, and they say that’s about the max for this distance, which is understandable. But there’s a 2x lossless zoom and a 3x camera, which is incredible.

The reason I love the 3x camera, or this 60mm focal length so much, is it gives you a much more realistic representation of what the background — that glacier — actually looks like when you’re sitting here staring at it. You can also do 6x if you want, which is a lossless zoom in theory, and you can also do a 12x, which is kind of ridiculous given how far you can go. Yes, the image starts to suffer at that point, and we’ll go back to the 1x, but the fact that you can do it is pretty freaking cool.

Audio That Holds Up From Hundreds of Feet Away

When it comes to audio, this does have good audio built in. But there’s pretty strong wind, so it’s probably really screwing up my voice. If you have something like the Mic Pro, even if you get disconnected, it has internal recording. It’s 32-bit, so you can’t blow it out. Plus it has a really cool internal stereo recording feature.

You can also start and stop recording on the Luna from the Mic Pro. One of the biggest advantages to having a Mic Pro or Mic Air is the fact that you get almost 1,000 feet of range. I was like 2 to 300 feet away just there, and the fact that you’re getting good clean audio no matter how far away I am is really, really convenient — especially if you’re on the wide-angle lens.

The Most Exciting Feature, and Why

The most exciting thing to me about this camera is not the fact that you can do the 1x or 2x lossless zoom, it’s the fact that you can do the 3x. The 3x actually switched to the second camera. What I love about this focal length, which is about 60mm, is that it gives you a really true-to-life representation of what the background looks like, of scale. This glacier, these mountains behind me — this is more what it feels like to actually stand here and look at it.

Whereas if you’re at the 1x, it still looks impressive, but nowhere near like if you’re using that 2x or especially that 3x focal length to get that background compression, to bring your background and your subject together a little bit more and give you a more true-to-life scale of what some incredible place like this actually looks and feels like to stand in. You’ll excuse me if I’m just kind of geeking out about the second focal length a little bit. It’s pretty awesome.

The Specs: 8K, 10-Bit I-Log and 14 Stops of Dynamic Range

You do get up to 8K 30 frames a second in both cameras. That will limit your zoom, but you can do 8K in the main camera and 8K in the 3x camera. Right now I’m filming in 8K 30 frames a second in I-Log, which gives you the maximum amount of dynamic range you’re going to get out of this camera — up to 14 stops, is what Insta360 says. This is a good example: I’m fully backlit by the sun, with white sunlit ice from the glacier and the mountains behind me. It’s really impressive the amount of dynamic range you’re getting out of a camera this size.

You can also film in something called Dolby Vision, which is essentially a high dynamic range Rec.2020 HLG color space that gives you access to a much broader dynamic range. If you’re working in HDR color spaces, you can use this. This video definitely isn’t, but if you’re watching things on HDR screens — modern 4K TVs with HDR capability, or even most modern phones — then you might want to consider it, and it is an option in this camera. Even the normal color profile, which is also 10-bit by the way, looks really good. The colors look really accurate.

A White Balance Sensor in the Gimbal Head

The other thing this camera is doing is they put a white balance sensor in the actual gimbal head, right between the cameras, so you can get a really good, accurate white balance. Honestly, it is blowing me away. There have been a few times on the beta firmware that it was a little weird every now and then, but for the most part it has performed really well in giving a really accurate white balance, which also gives you very accurate colors.

What’s Going On With the I-Log Footage

There’s something you need to know about the I-Log footage coming out of this camera, especially compared to the normal color profile. The normal color profile gives you the opportunity to dial down the sharpness, or add sharpness if you want to. You don’t really need to, but you can. Whereas the I-Log footage does not give you any control over the sharpness, but it also doesn’t seem to have hardly any in-camera sharpening applied. So you’ll have to sharpen it yourself in post.

I believe Insta360 did this to give us more of a raw footage out of the camera in I-Log to give you the most amount of control, which is exactly what they should do, because then you can color grade it, sharpen it to taste, or put noise reduction on it however you want in post. The normal color profile is more set to be just something that comes out of camera and is ready to go as is. But I think it’s probably a little bit over-sharpened, so I would dial that sharpness back just a little.

Slow Motion and Low-Light Performance

I feel like maybe I’ll just be shooting everything on this 3x lens now because it’s just so much fun. Some of the other specs: you can shoot up to 4K 120, and you can do that in a non-slow-motion mode or in a slow-motion mode. If you want it to slow down automatically to 30 frames a second, you can. But if you just want to shoot 4K 120 and then speed ramp in post, you can do that as well. You also get audio if you’re doing it in the normal mode versus the slow-motion mode. The slow-motion mode can also do HD up to 240.

You also get access to Insta360’s PureVideo mode, and they put a different chipset in this to give it incredibly good low-light performance. But if you need a little extra because it’s a little too low light or the lighting’s a little weird — even though I was really impressed with how it did — they even make a little tiny fill light for it. You can clamp it onto the gimbal and just give yourself a little bit more light wherever you need it.

Leica Color Profiles and Film-Emulation Filters

This camera has been co-engineered with Leica, which helped engineer the lenses on the cameras and some of the color science. That means they’ve given us some classic Leica color profiles. This is the Leica Natural color profile, which is supposed to give you some pretty natural colors and a nice general all-around look. This is the Leica Vivid color profile, which gives you a little bit more saturation, punchier colors, and a little more contrast. This is the Leica Chrome color profile, which gives you kind of a desaturated look, I think — it’s hard to tell right now being out here.

In addition to the Leica filters, there are also six other filters meant to emulate different forms of original film from Kodak and some other things. Overall, I’ve shot mostly in I-Log and then applied a LUT and color graded it myself in post, because that’s the way I like to do things. But if you want some baked-in colors, you can do that with all of those different profiles, and you can also turn down the intensity. Those samples were all at max intensity because I wanted you to see what they were doing, but you can turn the intensity down if you don’t want it quite that strong.

The 3x Lens for Macro Detail and Bokeh

Not only do I like the 3x lens because it gives you such a different feel and perspective, but it also can give you some really nice background blur and some really close, tight detail shots. That’s what I’ve been missing from little pocket cameras like this — being able to get those really tight detail shots. Now you can get them because of the 3x camera.

A Surprisingly Good Photo Camera

We’ve talked about the video features and specs, and it does an incredible job for video. But surprisingly, this camera is actually a really good photo camera, because you can take up to 37MP stills. You can do these super photos. For the 37MP, you can get a raw photo or JPEG, and they look really good. They give you a lot of flexibility.

That’s another issue I have with pocket cameras like this — in the past they were limited to like 9MP or something, which is fine if you’re just posting on social media, but pretty small if you want to do anything with them in post. With 37MP stills, it’s not just that they’re 37MP, it’s that they look really, really good. These are straight out of the camera, no editing. You can also do panoramas and 360 panoramas, and those also look really good. If you want a 360-degree photo, you can do it with this. Or if you want a 180-degree panorama, you could do it too — at 200MP, which is an insane amount of megapixels.

ND Filters and a Black Mist Filter

Insta360 does make ND filters for this, which is a good thing, because if you set your shutter speed properly and your ISO is as low as it’ll go, it doesn’t really matter unless you put an ND64 on there like I just did. Basically, that means you get proper motion blur when you have fast motion, which is what you want to make it look good to our eyes. So it’s super useful and a great accessory, and I’m sure there’ll be other ND filter offerings as well.

In addition to that, there’s also a black mist filter. If you want to smooth out some of the digital look — especially at night if you’re walking around a lot of lights — it kind of gives a little bit of a halo effect and chills everything out a little bit digitally. It can give you a really nice look.

The Wide-Angle Lens

They do offer a wide-angle lens. If you’re doing a lot of walking and talking to camera like this, and you want a little bit wider field of view, you can do that with the wide-angle lens. It does distort straight lines a little bit, so you might have to correct for that in post, but overall it gives you a nice wider field of view up to 180 degrees.

How Good Is the Tracking?

Let’s see how good the tracking is. Now we’re about 250 feet away on the wide-angle lens — and is it still tracking? In my experience, the tracking on this is excellent. It does a really good job of tracking even if I’m pretty dang far away.

Internal Storage and No USB Streaming (Yet)

Something else you need to know is that this camera has 47GB of internal storage, and you can also use an SD card if you want to. At the beginning I said there were a few things you need to be aware of, and one of those is that currently there’s no USB streaming on this camera. It doesn’t act as a webcam when you plug a USB-C cable into it, but I asked Insta360 about that, and that is coming in a future firmware update.

The Things You Need to Know Before Buying

While this does have 8K and some great imagery, it is limited to 120 megabits a second. I wish camera manufacturers would give us access to higher bit rates like 200 or 250 megabits a second — somewhere in there would be amazing — just because I like having as much data as possible. I understand it would make the camera run hotter, but I’m okay with that. I also don’t deal with heat as much as most people, because I’m in Alaska, and it’s generally not that hot.

Another thing: does the wide-angle lens stay on the camera, and does the gimbal go to its park position when the wide-angle is on there? The answer is no — it will go most of the way and then stop, because the wide-angle lens is obviously on there. So you do need to take the wide-angle lens off to store the gimbal away.

One other thing I ran into is when using the Mic Pro: if the Mic Pro is not already connected to the camera when you take the handle off, you can’t connect the Mic Pro to the camera. I’m sure that’s just some small bug that’ll be ironed out in future firmware, but if the Mic Pro is connected to the camera before you take the plate off, then it’s no problem — it still records from the Mic Pro, no big deal. But if you take the plate off and then turn the Mic Pro on and try to connect it, it won’t connect that way.

Focus on Faces and Products

The only other thing I ran into, at least on the beta firmware, was that there was no way to do a product showcase mode — but that has been added in the final firmware. So now if you want to showcase products to camera, whereas before it would definitely go after your face all the time, now it will do a better job of actually focusing on whatever is directly in front of the camera, not just focusing on faces.

What About the DJI Pocket 4 Pro?

A quick word about the Pocket 4 Pro: if you watch my Instagram, you’ve seen that I had a chance to actually work with it in Toronto. If you’re in the United States, it’s not going to be an option for you, because it is not approved for use or for sale here in the United States. So there will not be a Pocket 4 Pro release in the United States. If you’re interested in getting a dual-camera pocket gimbal camera like this, the Insta360 Luna is our only option here.

As always, if you have questions, ask me in the comments or join my live stream, which happens some Wednesday nights at 4:00 p.m. Alaska time, 8:00 p.m. Eastern — at least if I’m not out in a place like this. I’ll see you again soon in the next one. Cheers.

This article is based on a video from Jake Sloan on YouTube. You can find more of his work on the Jake Sloan YouTube channel and on his DroneXL author page.