cameras are amazing and I love being invited to unbox them on ShortCircuit
because I get to be made aware of cameras that aren't normally in my
wheelhouse like the zv1 Mark II this
little vlogging monster from Sony is quite the impressive little machine I'm
excited to get to this but let's see what else is in this box to be fair to
Sony this is not a retail box so although the items are the same it won't
look quite like this we get a little bx1 battery a type c to a cable our little
charging block little windscreen I am very grateful
that they sent us the wrong color because more than ever it now looks like
this camera has a haircut actually when I was using this camera on the weekend I
got a lot of comments like oh that's the cutest camera I've ever seen and I can't
I can't deny that it is the cutest camera I've ever seen I'm not a big fan
of including you know Walmart and a USB cable to charge your camera I much
prefer having an external charger because then you can charge a battery while you're using your camera but this
is how they save pennies and make this camera an affordable price
let's explore the body of this camera starting with its General feel and
weight Sony says that this camera with the battery and the SD card in is nine
ounces which is 255 grams
that's 300 grams it's not even close okay cool I'm
guessing they chose uh ounces as it's a much less precise unit of measurement
and they can you know round up a little bit the bottom has a pretty premium feel
it's that plastic finish it feels pretty hefty for its size although not too bad
it's a little small in my hand I'm having a hard time utilizing the rounded
edge of the grip I just kind of end up pinching right beside the lens it's fine
and everybody this small kind of has the same issue overall not a bad feeling
body can't really complain for this category of camera on the top we have
our hot shoe Mount which is our primary audio interface and you can use other
accessories although it is still currently locked to Sony audio
accessories which is a bit of a bummer if you want to use the internal mic
there's a three capsule mic and you can actually change the setting so that it's
you know an omnidirectional or forward backwards facing depending on the stuff
you're shooting we have our power button we have our mode switch button we can
switch between photo video and slow motion or other interval shooting modes
we have our video record button we have our shutter button and we have our
background bokeh button which is an essential piece to how Sony wants you to
utilize this camera we also have our Zoom switch I think the buttons feel a
little mushy the shutter button is the only one that has any real click the
Zoom rocker has a decent amount of resistance that feels okay on the back
we have our very angle LCD which is my current favorite implementation of an
articulating screen it means you can you
know shoot in all kinds of different angles the most important especially
with this kind of camera is facing yourself so you're able to kind of hold
the camera at an ARM's length and kind of see what you're shooting
big fan of that on the back we have our function button which is also sent to
smartphone button we have our menu we have our control wheel which has
different settings on each axis as well as a select button we have our playback
button or just like look at what's on your card button and our trash or if
you're in shooting modes our product showcase button another quick menu thing
to help you access the camera's full feature set as easily as possible on the
bottom we have our quarter 20 Mount and our battery and SD card compartment on
this kind of camera size you're only going to get one camera slot I'm not a
big fan of this battery type the bx1 is just a little too dinky for me on this
camera the bx1 will get to about 260 photos whereas a bigger battery like the
one on the zve E10 gets you 640. that's
a huge difference in 260 photos goes
pretty darn fast and so you'll need to carry a bunch of these batteries if
you're planning on doing a full day the nice thing as we come to the side is
that there's a USB port which is how you charge it but you can also use battery
banks for that bad boy one of the features that's really nice about having
a type c is you can actually use this camera as a webcam and an upgrade over
previous models is that you don't need to use Sony software as an intermediary
to do that you'll need a computer a phone that is UVC or UAC compatible the
downside is that it's limited to 720P
30. that's fine if you're a twitch streamer you know your little small
window in your screen and even at almost full screen that would be fine but it's
a little disappointing when you have a 4k camera that can only output 720p
through USB that said it can output 4K through its HDMI
um but this is little HDMI ports are the worst I hate
them so much and I want them to die I'm serious man I'm serious you have a
microphone Jack um which is nice you can use external
mics that utilize that connector one thing that's still missing on this is
there's no headphone jack for you to monitor your audio from for Solo shoots
that's not super unexpected but that's definitely something I'd like to see on
future revisions and especially as this
camera really has one main update and
it's the lens on the previous model zv1 it had a 24 to 70 equivalent lens that
was 1.8 to 2.8 in terms of f-stop this
one smartly in my opinion this is an 18 to 50 equivalent lens F 1.82 F4 that
might not seem like a huge difference but when you're holding it at just like
just over a meter away from your face 18 and 24 is a huge difference especially
if you're using stabilization in the camera that will introduce additional
crop I think it's a really smart upgrade in terms of a camera that's designed to
just be your run and gun camera and kind of fit all purposes
but what I found is that the 50 mil long
end is just a little too short there is
digital Zoom to compensate 1.5 times zoom in 4k mode or two times in 1080P
but that doesn't really mean anything you can just crop and post and have
basically the same result and while it's nice to have F 1.8 at the wide end F4 is
a little bit closed especially when you compare the previous models 2.8 at the
long end one thing that's really cool about this lens is it has a great macro
distance so at the wide end at 18 mil you can actually Focus five centimeters
away and at 50 15 centimeters away that's quite good in terms of focusing
distance and so you could actually get some very close up of some small things
although you would definitely not be able to get close-ups of far away things
oh this camera's excited to see you just like I'm excited to tell you about our
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link in the description below and check out secret lab today the first thing
you'll notice when you turn on the camera is that the UI is heavily touch
based Sony says that they're aiming to make it similar to using a touch phone
really intuitive really simple and in my experience it's mostly been like that so
right away you can switch between your different shooting modes first off we
have intelligent Auto which is our full AI mode every processing trick every
compensation that the processing can do
it does uh we have our different priority modes uh we have full manual
and we have different modes that you can kind of customize if I'm shooting professionally with this thing I would
probably switch to manual but I actually had pretty good experience using the
intelligent Auto I much prefer keeping my shutter speed the same and letting
the camera compensate using ISO and even the aperture next we have our drive mode
you can do single shooting burst shooting timers and different brackets
so that in post you can combine the photos kind of get this really intense HDR look we have our Focus modes uh the
default was Zone but you can set a point and kind of have it track through your
image you have your beauty filter on and off which is going to stay off next we
have our record and stop record buttons
we have our soft skin effect which is
gonna be off although I found the low setting to be fine uh some of the
footage from this camera can be a little grainy and some of the processing can
soften some skin I didn't find it too bad there's also a zoom preset button so
you can go right to one time or two times Zoom we also have our waveform
Monitor and our camera settings at the
bottom a lot of these settings can be accessed through the buttons on the top and the side but it is nice especially
if you're a new shooter to be able to just look at something touch it and
manipulate it I'm a big fan of touchscreen interfaces that are really
simple to use and I think they've done a pretty good job another thing I think
Sony has done really well is they've made the menu a lot more like an alpha
camera a lot of the layout is the same and I found as someone who's used to an
alpha camera it was really easy to navigate we have our different image
quality settings are media settings our file format and structure we have our
shooting modes Drive modes our shutter settings a lot of these again are
available through the touch screen right away we have our exposure settings we
have our Focus settings our playback settings our network settings which is
cool like previous zv cameras you can connect to a smartphone or the my
creator app on a PC and unlock kind of extra features and then our general
camera settings one of the strengths of Sony cameras for a long time has been
its autofocus and this camera is no different Sony says that using autofocus
this camera can get focus in .03 seconds and that's because it's using 315 phase
and 425 contrast detection autofocus
points on 65 percent of the sensor that's not the most comprehensive I've
seen But for a camera this small that's very impressive in my use over the
weekend I found that it was quite excellent at tracking subjects at many different distances switching between
catching faces and those autofocus points are supplemented by AI face
detection multiple face detection World actually stop down the aperture to give
you a wider depth of field and so it can keep multiple faces in focus it also has
object detection so you know you can like dog or car and it's done a really
good job in my experience of tracking those subjects through video through
photo and that's definitely one of the big strengths of this camera
speaking of sensor this camera has the same sensor as the Mark 1 which has the
same sensor as the RX100 Mark VII it's a
little bit disappointing although sensor technology advancements have kind of
slowed not a huge deal it's a one inch type 20.1 megapixel sensor it does ISO
125 up to 12 800 and even 25 600 in
certain modes all in all a pretty great sensor especially when you consider the
target audience for this camera and that's for people that may not know how to fully utilize all the fine controls
of a higher end camera and to that end like I mentioned before Sony has two
modes easily accessible by button one is a background bokeh setting which will
open up the aperture as wide and compensate using other settings so that
you can have your subject in focus in a background bokeh
I don't know how to say it I read it more than I say it you also have your
product showcase button which does a similar thing opens up the aperture but
it changes the autofocus speeds that's a little smoother of a transition like
recent zv cameras this has the cineblog setting you turn it on you get an
anamorphic crop and you switch to 24 frames a second you can also change the
color very easily I don't think I would be using this but
I can definitely see the use for someone who's just running and gunning and needs
to know to shoot a skid and add a little texture and color to their to their work
another strength of an all-in-one camera like this is that its image
stabilization is built to utilize every part of the camera to its maximum
potential that being said there's no inline stabilization there's no in body
stabilization there is just electronic
stabilization um your options are off
or on when you turn it on your crop is
about 1.5 times so what was 18 mil becomes about 24 mil
uh that's fine uh and that's better than you know starting at 24 and becoming
like 33 but in my short experience using this camera the stabilization doesn't
look super good and that's pretty common of electronic stabilization there's just
like a little bit of blur on everything and sure the the points of the camera
are staying mostly stable but the things inside it kind of have that unnatural
look to it I'm not a huge fan of electronic stabilization and the stuff
in this camera is definitely not the best but if you are running around you
know doing a travel Vlog it would be a fine the nice thing about image
stabilization is that it works with both photos and video and speaking of video
options which is definitely the focus of
this camera it does 4K 30 or 24 or 1080p
up to 120 and you can even do higher frame rates at these kind of like
interlaced modes up to 960 which is
pretty high but it looks real bad the highest bit rate it can do is 100
megabits at 420 not the best but for a
camera this size and for the target audience that's fine although it doesn't
have any 10-bit modes it does have s-log 3 S gamma 3 and hybrid log gamma and so
this is pretty full featured for a camera the size and I was pleasantly
surprised by that and if you want to shoot the 100 megabits but also shoot
proxies that is available to you the camera does have picture profiles which
is nice it's not as fully featured to some of the higher end ones but uh it's
there and that's nice if you turn off the picture profiles you get access to the creative look which can be nice you
can find people that have you know ideal settings to match a certain look and
customize it that way and there's also the pre-built ones that are okay this
camera obviously has a rolling shutter it was fine I didn't really like the
look of motion when I was shooting and I generally found all the video I was
shooting with it had that digital look of like a 2011 camera
it wasn't bad it was sharp and the photos I took were pretty decent uh
especially for a camera this size with a built-in lens man we have come so far
with little point and shoots it is insane that being said this camera costs
900 and that is a very saturated price point
there is a lot of competition even from Sony themselves at less than 900 that I
think I would probably consider before this this is a good camera and if you
already have a higher end camera that you shoot primarily on and you want
something you can just keep in your backpack and pull it out when you need to this thing is more than sufficient
and will definitely do the job especially if you're someone that's
shooting selfie Vlogs having that extra wide angle lens is a huge Boon and there
is no other point-and-shoot that has that wide of an angle equivalent at any
price point for 150 cheaper you can get
the previous model one that is essentially as good minus that extra a
wide lens if you don't need that extra wide angle lens I would suggest getting
the mark one in terms of direct competitor in this category there's the
gx7 Mark III which is pretty good and
has a longer throw up to 120 mil with a wider aperture there's also the
Panasonic g100 which I've seen for around 550 online which is pretty good
of those three this is probably the one
I would pick if I was doing selfies but I would pick the mark one for General
use that being said for less money than
this thing you can get which is kind of
inarguably the step up in the same model
line the zve E10 right now from b h you
can get a zve E10 with a kit lens for a hundred dollars cheaper than this thing
it has a bigger sensor it does better video that kit lens isn't the best lens
in the whole world you know 3.5 to 5 6 aperture is
not ideal and it's a 16 to 50 so when
you add the crop it's wide as is less wide than this but then you have a
camera you can upgrade into the future you can buy more lens you can buy a
wider lens and in my opinion if having
the built-in lens isn't the killer feature I would definitely recommend the
zve E10 over the zv1 Mark II any day and
if you want to check out more camera content I recently unboxed a zve E1 and
that was quite the camera