I had heard about the Insta360, but I knew nothing about it, so I watched some videos last night. It works like magic!

It's an action camera with a lens in front and a lens in back, and it records from both simultaneously. The camera knows where its body is, so it eliminates itself from the video. You can use a selfie stick, and the camera makes the stick disappear. When you load the file onto your computer, you have an entire sphere of video - 720°(?). You decide which part to include in your finished video. Walking through the forest, you can show your feet, then the tops of the trees, and then the view behind you.

If I had a need for this, and if it didn't cost $450, I'd love to have one. I'd be glad to accept one as a gift. Hint, hint.

I am thinking about buying Topaz AI for reducing noise and sharpening. It may help in general on some pictures, but some photos specifically... an example of where I think it will help me the most is some wildlife pictures, mostly birds, that I couldn't get close enough to (with the lens I have) and I want to crop. Questions:

1. Am I off base in making the assumption... of noise/sharpening help (I have looked at the trial and on some of the photos it seems to help A LOT)?

2. Where I am going to crop, should I crop 1st and then use Topaz AI... or vice versa?

By the way, I got a Black Friday e-mail from them and the price was the SAME $159 they have been advertising lately... no deal here and no reason to hurry on purchase (don't want to install yet anyway because my HDD is dying on my desktop and I have ordered an SSD to replace it... want to wait and install when I have the SSD running)