This is the Sony ZV-1, a camera targeted at Vloggers and released a year back. With the release of the ZV-10 is this still worth considering. Watch on to find out.
The Zv-1 is reminiscent of older point and shoot cameras I have used which have a fixed lens, by that I mean the lens cannot be changed. So, you are stuck with the 24-70 lens that’s present, is that necessarily a bad thing?
The Sony Zv-1 integrates a 20.1 megapixel 1 inch Exmor RS CMOS sensor, and the processing muscle is provided by the Bionz-X. It has 4K HDR recording, Wi-Fi control, sd card support and more.
315 auto focus points and real time AF, this is something I’m hoping is good. Let’s open the box and check out what we get.
Inside we have the warranty card, manuals,
and under this flap we have the camera and it’s accessories.
The camera uses micro-usb to charge which is ok, but that’s another cable I need to pack when travelling.
It uses NP-BX1 batteries which lasts for around 60 minutes of continuous shooting. You can charge the battery using the micro usb port so if you shoot in short bursts, it should last the day.
And here’s the camera. It’s made of a compost material as opposed to the magnesium alloy that the rx100 and above use.
We have the Zeiss 24-70 equivalent lens which is integrated into the camera and can open the aperture all the way to f1.8 when completely zoomed out, but shifts to f2.8 when you zoom in. The zoom range is around 2.7X.
The grips are well placed with a rubberized feel, but the camera did feel a bit too small in my hands and at 294 grams is quite light.
Sony provides this wind screen or dead cat as it’s called to cut down on wind noise, when shooting outdoors, and it can attach to the camera using the hot shoe.
This is a Directional 3-capsule mic which uses spatial filtering to capture clear audio in front of the camera with fewer distracting ambient sounds. Have to test the quality.
We have an on/off button, a mode button. This button with the red circle is to start/stop video recording.
Oh, this is a nice one, this is to toggle Bokeh mode or shallow depth of field. We have the shutter button with the zoom rocker, which needs to be used to zoom in and out. We don’t have any physical zoom ring on the lens.
A thumb rest is present above the buttons.
The camera is a trimmed down version of the Sony RX100, with most of the innards. So what’s missing, the first glaring difference is that the zv-1 is missing an evf or electronic viewfinder. But it does have this gorgeous screen, which I’m glad Sony designed to flip out to the side, it can be twisted and turned to the angle you like.
This is great if you want to get shots from down below or high up without having to bend or tiptoe, also it rotates to the front and you have a selfie point of view, which is where it’s vlogging DNA lies.
You could turn the screen around and bam it’s safe within.
As it flips to the side you are not blocked by any accessories you attach to the hotshoe, as older cameras did have this problem.
As I said this camera is targeted at Vloggers, and hmm I would say it does work, but 24mm is a bit too tight, so unless you use something to hold the camera away from you, it’s going to be too in your face. Sony does sell this tripod/remote stand combo, but it’s just too expensive.
All the options on the camera are controlled via the buttons here, the screen is a touch screen, but the menus are not.
On the bottom we have the tripod mount, and the battery/memory card bay. Let’s install the battery and start the camera up.
The camera comes with a 64 gb memory card, which is fine, but I later upgraded to 256 GB so that the storage doesn’t become a hindrance to how long I can record.
Opening the screen also activates the camera, which is nice as you’re ready to shoot as soon as it’s open. You can also manually turn the camera on or off using the button on top, if you have the screen facing you and closed.
There you go, the camera is now active. The lens pops out when active and completely retracts into the body to keep itself safe when off.
We have a shutter that protects the lens from the front, and closes completely when the lens is retracted.
Using the zoom rocker, allows us to zoom in and out, and you can see the lens physically moving as we make changes.
We have multiple modes, which are accessible via the mode button, higher end cameras have it as a dial, but on this camera you need to use the interface. I’m setting it to auto mode for now as I still need to get used to the camera’s interface.
Ports wise we have a microphone in jack, which is a godsend. We can use any external mic which uses a 3.5mm jack and that’s great. Under that we have a micro-USB and a micro HDMI port. All these ports are covered by a plastic flap and can be opened separately as necessary.
Auto focus is the reason I picked up this camera. I’ve had the Nikon Z6 miss focus so many times, which as I record alone, I would find out only after I complete the recording. Even though I’m monitoring it, a slight off focus is not visible on my Nikons screen at all. But I love the colours I get on the Nikon, so it is still my main camera.
Memory cards supported are SDXC at UHS-I speeds.
One massive problem is that the sd card and battery bay are not accessible when on a tripod, so I had to purchase this cage by small-rig, which when installed provides more mounting holes and also provides access to the battery/card slot even when on a tripod. “WOW”
Being small and compact and not weighing much it’s comfortable to carry around and a lot of places that ban DSLR’s, allow these in as they are similar in size to nonprofessional compact cameras. If you travel a lot this would be a handy camera to carry around.
But I now have three types of travel cameras, now the battle would be which one would I pack when we can travel again.
The dedicated video record and shutter buttons are easy to find even by feel and you can quickly access them.
The fn button provides access to settings on screen to change important options such as drive, auto focus, white balance, ND and more.
We also have a beauty mode available, which I always keep off, but for beauty vloggers it might be helpful.
The 3 inch touch screen is fully articulating and is bright enough, but in bright sunlight you can’t see much and would need to shield the screen with your hands.There is a Sunny weather mode which increases the screen brightness, a viewfinder would have helped, but Sony did have to cut costs somewhere. It’s reasonably crisp at 921k dots. Also, I noticed that It seems to have problems with polarized sunglasses, the screen looks black through them.
We can shoot 4k up to 30 fps and if you choose 1080p we can record upto 120fps.
It does have a HFR mode which can shoot at 240,480 and 960 fps.
But the higher the frame rate the lower the resolution.
We also have advanced profiles such as HLG, SLog-2 and S-Log 3 similar to the ones on Sony’s higher end models which provides more flexibility to fine-tune colors and tones. I shoot in the standard profile.
Bright daylight we have no problems shooting and the autofocus works well.
It does come with built in 3 stop ND or neutral density filters which allows bringing out more detail. Low light and indoor shots can be grainy, so try to bring in as much light as you can.
We can burst capture at 24fps in RAW or Jpeg format.
Holding down the shutter button the buffer can hold upto 75 raw+jpeg shots and 165 jpegs in full burst.
It’s rated for about 260 still shots and video recording time we get around 75 minutes in 1080p and 45 minutes in 4k on a full battery.
If you have it connected to a Power Bank or USB port via your computer it can run longer unless it overheats.
We do have a setting to allow it to ignore the heating and record longer and I have set it to that as I’m never sure how long I need to record.
A Steady shot option is also available which helps for still and also for video. We have two stabilization modes and both of them crop into the video and even more when set to active. This might annoy vloggers, who would want the stabilization but the crop makes it too close for comfort.
315 phase detection autofocus points or PDAF grab focus really fast, and is very accurate.
24mm is a bit tight for vlogging, I use this manfrotto pixi mini to get more reach and it helps quite a bit. Sony has their own Wireless Shooting grip, but that costs almost 10k more, so didn’t go for it.
Eye AF for both humans and animals is available and works for both stills and video.
ISO range is between 100 and 12,800, but being such a small sensor, low light shots are this camera’s kryptonite.
A recording light indicates when the camera is recording, as it shines red, but it reflects easily when shooting reflective products, so I generally keep it turned off.
Stills, be it human or objects close or far it does a decent job. I did find that the macro mode only works when totally zoomed out.
The bokeh mode or background defocus mode is just one one button away, so just tap and you get creamy bokeh with sharp subjects. This is actual bokeh and not software tricks like how the smartphones do it. If you don’t want that feature you can always set to another option as this is the C1 or customisable button.
The built-in microphone is quite capable and the sound is quite clear. You can attach an external microphone which connects to the 3.5mm headphone jack to the side.
The mode button allows toggling between multiple shooting modes, like scene selection, auto, panorama and we have manual and memory recall modes.
Battery life is not that bad at around 60 minutes but if you are shooting at 4k it does drop quite fast. As I mostly shoot in my studio and is connected to the Pc it lasts longer.
I do have this small little charger which can charge three batteries at a time and connects via micro-usb, so you can charge multiple batteries using a powerbank.
We can remotely control the camera and it’s really helpful being able to monitor what’s being recorded, change settings and start stop recording. This application is by Sony and free to download via their website.
We also have the option to control the camera via the phone using Sony’s Imaging Edge app, you can change settings, start stop recording and also copy files over via Wi-fi. This is very important for influencers who want to post their pictures or videos fast online.
Why did I choose this camera, this is to move my main camera the Nikon Z6 off the overhead rig as it’s very expensive. If this falls it will give me less of a heart attack but being much lighter the tripod could support it much better as compared to my 2 kilo Nikon.
A nifty feature specially made for product reviewers is the presenter mode, you bring anything in front of the camera, and it automatically shifts focus to it. Most cameras target the face, but this mode helps keep the product in focus so even if i’m visible the product is prioritized more in this mode.
The Zv-1 is a great camera for casual shooters and also influencers who don’t want a very expensive camera but still get great quality. The autofocus is what I would really pick this camera for, it is just great. There are some limitations such as a small battery as the body is quite small, no viewfinder so viewing the screen in bright sunlight is almost impossible. The lens is fixed, so you cannot swap them like it’s bigger brethren, but that is something I’m actually happy about as it is protected within the camera body and is a light and compact package. Not cheap but still costs half as much compared to their bigger cousins, and do note the camera bodies themselves are much more expensive than the zv-1 not bringing the cost of lenses into the picture. The ZV-10 which released recently has the option to replace the lens but is much more expensive as compared to the zv-1.
I would totally recommend the Sony ZV-1 for first time vloggers and influencers as it’s affordable and the 1 inch sensor will give you better images than your average smartphone camera.
