Fstoppers Reviews the QooCam 3 Ultra: A 360 Camera Worthy of the Name

by Wasim Ahmad October 7, 2024 0 Comments

It’s a bold move to append the word “Ultra” to the end of your camera name, but in the case of the Kandao QooCam 3 Ultra, the name fits.

Building on the strengths of the already very good QooCam 3, the Ultra version of the camera looks and operates very similarly, but with a completely different set of internals that make it good for 96 MP still 360 images (up from the 62 MP in the regular version of the camera) and 8K 30P 360 video (up from 5.7K in the older camera). More resolution in 360 video is always a good thing. When video is wrapped around a 360 sphere for viewing, it always looks lower than the resolution would imply, and if you're punching out a section for two-dimensional usage, more pixels help that cause.

All of this compares favorably with the competition in the smaller-sensor 360 category. The camera features dual 1/1.7" sensors, larger than its nearest neighbor from Insta360, the X4, which features 1/2" sensors with 72 MP still images. While the $599 QooCam 3 Ultra costs $100 more than the X4, there’s certainly a value case there with the larger sensors and higher megapixel still images.

Kandao sent me a QooCam 3 Ultra to test, and I took a deep dive into the photography features of the camera. There are a lot of videos out there that focus on the video aspects, and there are a few tests I did there, but as a photography-focused site, the high-megapixel photo feature was most intriguing to me as a photographer.

Body and Operation

Compared to the QooCam 8K from 2020, it’s a radical departure. The QooCam 8K looked like an elongated bar of soap, and it would often get very hot very quickly in operation. Both cameras feature fans that kick on once you stop recording, and with the QooCam 3 Ultra, the camera recorded for almost 20 minutes in 8K before it would get to the point where I was a little worried. The older camera got there much faster. There's a menu option in the QooCam 3 Ultra that lets you set when the high-temperature safeties kick in if you're the conservative type.

The QooCam 3 Ultra instead looks like an elongated version of its little brother, the QooCam 3. It’s about the size of a hefty deck of cards with small lenses protruding from both sides, as well as a touch screen for operation on one of the faces. But the company made some key design fixes that rectified some complaints with the older design, such as the finicky battery door that’s no longer finicky. It feels like it can take more liquid abuse compared to the older model as a result. It’s listed as rain, water, and dust-proof, though it’s not recommended to take it underwater without a housing. The USB-C port is now a completely separate port that makes it much easier to charge, offload files, or run some sort of digital audio, if the built-in spatial microphones aren’t enough.

The USB-C port is now a separate flap on the side of the camera, making it much more useful than in the previous iteration.

And in a key return from the QooCam 8K, there’s built-in memory to the tune of 100 GB, a staggering amount that almost eliminates the need for a memory card on a smaller shoot. It’s listed as 128 GB on the spec sheet, but only 100 was accessible for media. I was able to get about 15 minutes of 8K recording, and it only took up about 18 GB of space. Here’s a sample of what some of that looked like in its original 360 form:

While I praised the QooCam 3 for its quick connections to the QooCam 3 app on the iPhone, this Ultra camera seems to be more stable and connects faster and more reliably than that camera, which had a few crashes that required hard resets. It’s a small thing, but it’s also a sign that the app and camera interface have matured to the point where things just work. I just had to have my Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on in the phone, and the camera and the app took care of the rest every time. Some of this could probably also be attributed to the Wi-Fi 6 compatibility in the camera.

The desktop software, QooCam Studio, while not as full-featured as some of the things from Insta360 and its AI-enhanced tools, works great to stitch together files in any format you might need. The company has enhanced its QooCam Studio software to now even stitch DNG files, so photographers don’t have to edit first and then stitch. For video shooters, the company said that it plans to release firmware that allows for stitching of 8K footage in-camera.

If you’ve been hanging on to the QooCam 8K because of the higher resolution video, aside from the software improvements, there’s also now a removable battery. That alone may be worth the price of admission for some. With a mix of video and photo shooting while connecting to my phone, I used the QooCam 3 Ultra for about an hour and still had 50% battery left, though if you shoot more video than photo, you may get less than that as the fans kick in as the camera gets hot.

While there isn’t a real resolution increase for video (it’s the same size sensor and video resolution), the improvements in dynamic range and overall image quality are a marked difference from the QooCam 8K. Things are much better in the consumer camera space than four years ago, when the QooCam 8K was released. There’s also excellent stabilization, as you can see from this reframed 4K video that was originally shot as 8K 360:

There is also the requisite timelapse mode included in the camera, if that’s your thing. The QooCam 3 Ultra supports Bluetooth and includes a GPS receiver, so it’s ready for Google Maps images as well.

Still Image Quality

If there’s a standout area of this camera for me, it’s the still photo capabilities. I’ve had the opportunity to test an incredibly high-end camera in the Insta360 Titan, and those photos top out at 60 MP. This camera shoots 96 MP and while it may not have as many lenses or as large sensors, the level of detail is astounding and, to my eye, on par or better than that $16,000 camera. For a camera that’s $600 and much easier to use, that’s a huge win. Check out the details in this 360 shot of this abandoned spot:

What’s the point of all that resolution? For photographers doing real-estate work in particular, it affords a level of detail and ease of use that’s unparalleled, and for others, it’s enough resolution to punch in and create usable two-dimensional images as well. Here’s a crop of the 360 photo where it still retains much of the detail:

A regular still image pulled from the QooCam 3 Ultra's 96MP still. There's still tons of detail and resolution here.
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It’s truly ushering in an era where one can just shoot and compose later. As long as you’re willing to accept the deep depth of field associated with the sensor size, you can make a photo out of pretty much anything you see, within reason. This has always been the promise of 360 images, but this is one of the first cameras with enough resolution to make that a reality.

The camera also offers a wealth of shooting options, from auto-exposure bracketing to DNG, to the company’s HDR-like DNG8 mode, which captures and merges 8 DNG images for greater dynamic range. In practice, I found the standard DNG files to be flexible enough to work for everything I needed to do. As in almost all 360 cameras I’ve ever used (the exception being the Panox V2), I found the straight-out-of-the-camera JPG files to be lacking in detail compared to the DNGs, and so everything you see in this review was created from DNG files edited using Adobe Camera Raw. That also helps at high ISO shooting, which isn’t too bad given the smaller sensor size. Here’s a sample at ISO 6400:

The camera does sport f/1.6 lenses, so that will help avoid these high ISOs in the first place.

If there’s one knock against this camera, it’s the lack of in-camera stitching. It’s annoying to have to use the app on the phone or desktop to stitch together basic photos. I asked Kandao reps if DNG stitching was coming to the new firmware in November and was told that the amount of data for DNG stitching was too much to process and that photographers shooting DNG tended to be the type that edited on their computers anyway.

While that last part may be true, it would certainly save me a step in the process, which would be a welcome change.

In any case, DNGs look great and hold a lot of detail in the shadows and highlights. Here’s another scene where you can see that in action:

If stills are the priority, there are few other 360 cameras (and none in this price range) that are going to beat this camera’s overall mix of resolution and image quality.

Conclusion

Kandao took everything there was to love about the QooCam 3—already a good 360 camera—and turned it up to 11.

For video shooters, the QooCam 3 Ultra marks the return of 8K to the lineup, in a much-improved form that is competitive with other 8K cameras in its class. There’s a lot to love here for video, but it’s not all that dissimilar from the competition in this respect. Sure, there are some extra features such as the ability to use 8- or 10-bit recording, HDR capture, and a flexible multi-use USB port.

But for photographers, the real draw of the camera is the very high-resolution stills and the flexibility those high-resolution stills bring to your workflow. Indeed, it’s good at video, but it’s great for still photos.