(John Warkentin)
John Warrenton here from the Michael’s Camera Social Media Team in Melbourne Australia.
Today we’ve got a couple of interesting brand new Nikon KeyMission series cameras that have just shown up for the first time in Australia!
[Displayed are two Nikon camera boxes – one large for the 360 and one small for the 170]
We’ve got the KeyMission 360 here and we’ve got the Action Camera KeyMission 170.
Now the KeyMission 360 is the panoramic camera, and that’s the one that’s of key interest to me right now.
So let’s get right to it and open the box!
So, the box is approximately, oh, I’d say 20 cm x 20 cm x maybe 11 cm, or so; nice colour box; it’s got a couple of photos of the camera, front, back and profile on the front of it; denotes that it’s 4k video, which of course is the key feature for the KeyMission 360.
[Opens the lid of the box]
So we open it up here.
Looks like we’ve got some documentation, a little “I’m up to date” – “Thank you for choosing the KeyMission 360 to record your mission; please be aware there’s an update of the instruction manual available.” Most likely there will be some firmware updates – always important to check these things.
Looks like we’ve got the warranty cards here; the manuals; looks like a little short safety instruction; looks like a little bit of what is this? Status of the camera time purchase - so this must be something about the connecting of the internet - a little bit of a” sharing my mission” thing here; must be about the awards program… “find out how you can share your mission to be awarded prizes and more at Nikon.KeyMission.com!
Okay, very interesting!
Another manual of some sort here; oh, this is like, how to open the box.
Okay. Well, let’s cut to the chase here; get this; it looks like we have some more cardboard packaging; oh, this is probably a VR headset for your iPhone or your smartphone or something - sounds good.
Looks like there also should be… was there any software here? Didn’t see any software yet.
Let’s open up this part; ah, here we are, getting to the good stuff.
[Camera zooms in on the contents of a multi-compartment box]
Let’s zoom in a little bit here.
Okay.
Most important part of any unboxing is - let’s get to the camera! Looks like this is it here!
Okay, it’s wrapped in some nice protective foam.
[Unwraps camera from protective covering]
There we go. Okay, there’s a little tag on it here; let’s carefully get it out.
Oh, interesting. Okay. It seems rather well-built; feels nice in the hand.
Now, which is the front and which is the back?
It’s not obvious; I guess we will have to figure that out later.
I would assume maybe…I don’t know… not too sure.
Figuring out which is the front and the back is important for these things because you need to know which direction is the centre of your equirectangular panorama.
But there we go; that feels very nice in the hand; it feels to my hand to weigh a little bit more than the Theta.
Now, this is an obvious point of comparison; I’ve got a Theta in my pocket here; let me just pull this out, just so we can have a comparison.
[Brings a little Theta camera into the view]
Now the Theta comes in this little neoprene sleeve here; so here is the Theta.
Now, this is, of course, Ricoh’s panoramic camera, which the Nikon KeyMission 360 is its direct competitor; albeit now the Nikon is about a year newer. Ricoh has not announced a new higher spec camera in the Theta line; however, they have just recently announced a lower priced Theta SC with similar specifications to the Theta S - which is what I’m showing you here.
So obviously, the distance between the lenses is dramatically different here between these two things; I would venture to say just judging from this, that the distance between the front of each lens is maybe four times greater with the KeyMission 360 than the Theta; so of course, that’s going to be really important when we find out how well it stitches and how close objects can be stitched nearest to the camera.
Okay, let’s put the Theta down for a sec here, and let’s get to the rest of our box.
So let’s put our KeyMission over to the side.
Let’s see what else we’ve got in the box here.
Looks like we’ve got a little rubber gasket; a little protector that goes around the KeyMission 360; this looks like our battery, and let’s take a look at that; it’s an en-el-12; as I understand it, this is a common battery used in many Nikon products.
So that’s good to have there; now, obviously, removable - very important feature here - versus the Theta which has an internal battery.
So for when you’re out on a big shooting mission, you can obviously have spare batteries with you.
Looks like we’ve got a USB cable here; it’s got a ferrite choke on it; pretty standard; sometimes these devices are a little finicky with their cables, so you want to have the correct cable that originally came with the product.
What else do we have here?
This looks like a socket adapter for Australian power; oh, this is good - you’ve got a little miniature mount here with some adhesive tape on it; so this is like an action mount for the camera.
Okay.
And over here, looks like our battery charger. That’s interesting; that’s got USB on it, but that’s North American power; so I guess this other little adapter I pulled out here earlier - where did that go? – Ah, yes, so this is North American to Australian converter, versus a thing that just plugs right in.
Let’s just see how that works here.
[Unwraps little adapter]
Like so? A little unsure of this at the time here. We’ll deal with that later.
Not too sure about that!
And what else we have here at the end?
We have, ah, this looks like lens protectors. Ah, okay, this is interesting – we’ve got two lens protectors here; these ones are flat, so these might very well be the underwater lens protectors. Okay!
Doesn’t look like there’s anything else below the box, so that kind of wraps up our unboxing of the KeyMission 360.
We’re quite excited to get this thing fired up and show you some real world results!
First order of business: get the battery charged, and I want to take some product photographs of this using the 3D vis optic VR turntable that we’ve got here!
So, expect to see an updated listing on the michaels.com.au website today, that will show a full 360-degree product view of the Nikon KeyMission 360.
Thanks a lot for joining us for this unboxing video and we’ll probably do another video shortly for the KeyMission 170; and then I’ve got to check inventory and see if we’ve got the KeyMission 80, which is the lifelogging camera - see if we’ve got that in stock yet!
But we’re pretty excited about this camera; we’re going to put it through its paces and we’ll most likely do a lot of a/b comparisons between the KeyMission 360 and of course, the Ricoh Theta.
So I know that everybody who’s got a Theta is interested in this new camera; and of course, 4k video is what’s really exciting about the KeyMission 360!
Thanks for joining us, and follow us on YouTube, and we’ll have obviously more videos to come.
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