Why did they make this??? - Zeiss ZX1 Android Camera
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2021-05-05
·
2,762 words · ~13 min read
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- It is six grand US. (man groaning)
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So many of you may have never heard of the lens manufacturers Zeiss,
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or if you're into cameras, you will have known them for their legendary lenses.
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But today we're talking about the ZX1,
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which is Zeiss's new digital camera. Now Zeiss has made many film cameras in the past,
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but this is their first digital camera. And it's a weird one because it also runs Android.
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It's not the first camera that's ever run Android, and you can't install anything you want,
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but it has a full Adobe Lightroom CC mobile on it,
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and built-in Instagram and other ways to share things. Their slogan on the side of the box is,
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shoot, edit, share. Right off the bat the packaging is really nice.
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It feels very soft. It is exactly what a premium product should be,
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which I would expect from Zeiss because they've been doing this for a long time,
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at least with their lenses. Wow, this is a metal lens hood. That's nice.
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You don't really see that very often, but we'll get to the price in a second,
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this makes sense. Oh, this is kind of a funky way to do,
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an instruction manual quick start guide.
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It's like a little accordion (chuckles). So we'll look at the camera more in a second,
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but let's see what's in the rest of the box. But before that,
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So I noticed right off the bat, that this camera already has pre-installed anchors,
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where the straps would go. And so that makes me think that, "wow,
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"it comes with a Peak Design camera strap, which is really cool.
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If you don't know Peak Design, they make a lot of really cool camera strap,
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a bit bags, camera accessories in general. But their strap is where they started.
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And it's got this really cool locking mechanism,
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where you just slide in the anchor, and you can put the strap on really easily.
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And if you want to take it off, you just press it and you take it off.
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So that this might be one of the only cameras
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where you will use the strap it comes with,
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because it's a strap that people actually buy. The strap is worth like $80, I think,
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or something like that. Oh, and then it's even a little kit for an extra anchor,
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and then a little tripod adapter with an Allen key. That's a very nice touch,
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they clearly partnered with Peak Design, Type-C charger.
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And you have a Type-C cable. What's this?
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Oh, and you got a little Type-C to USB 3 adapter,
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and its own little tiny Velcro pouch. This is the cutest poach I've ever seen.
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Who does this? So let's take a look at the camera itself.
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It's an interesting shape.
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52 millimeter front filter adapter.
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And a fixed 35 mm f/2 lens.
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So, 35 mm is a good portrait
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or wide angle, like medium wide angle, like landscape,
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focal range. And this is a full frame sensor. It's 37.4 megapixels.
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So this lens is pretty wide and pretty versatile, and it's a lens choice that I think a lot of people use
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a lot of the time. 35 mil is one of my favorite focal lengths. It is fixed though.
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So you have no option of taking this camera's lens off
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and putting something else on. Zeiss designed this from the ground up.
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They designed the camera body. This is their 35 millimeter Distagon lens which,
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they are legendarily good at making, and the sensor as well.
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Like the entire camera was designed in-house.
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And the grip, feels
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not bad. I have this weird spacing in between where my fingers bend,
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which I think would get uncomfortable. So depending on your hand size,
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it's a very like minimalist design, like the camera objectively looks nice.
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And I think that Zeiss was definitely going for something that was very minimalist,
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but had physical dials. You have physical dials on the lens.
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Aperture dial. You have your shutter speed dial,
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and your ISO dial, which is really nice. Any camera that can integrate physical dials
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for each exposure setting, I am personally a huge fan of.
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The touch display is 720P, and it's supposed to be as responsive
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as your typical smartphone display. In theory, that's kind of what this entire thing is.
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So on the touchscreen, they've made this like slidable control here,
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where you can have your thumb and navigate the different settings in the camera
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while not obstructing your live view if you're using live view. Or you could even do it through the EVF.
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So when you look through the EVF,
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you can touch the touchscreen, and still navigate the menu through the EVF,
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even though the touchscreen actually goes off. So you see here.
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And so when I'm touching the screen here, if you were able to see what's happening in the EVF,
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you can still navigate the screen. Which is really cool.
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And of course when you're trying to change it here, it's relatively responsive.
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Oh, there's a little light. Okay. So not quite as good as
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the best smartphones, but I would say this is one of the best touchscreens
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on a camera that I've used, in a while. Oh, and the shutter is really quiet.
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Can you guys hear that?
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That is not loud at all. That's actually a pretty impressive. It's a leaf shutter in this camera.
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The benefits to this, I guess, are things like it being quieter.
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And it's just a completely different way to make your camera... Not that many cameras have a leaf shutter,
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famously the Fuji X100 series has a leaf shutter as well.
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But the biggest downside for me of a leaf shutter without getting too far into the technical details,
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is that the shutter speeds are much more limited.
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The highest shutter speed that you can use on this camera,
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is one over 2000. And for a leaf shutter that's on the higher end,
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but that's just the physical limitation of the way that the blades in front of the sensor
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are designed, where you can't do a faster shutter speed than that.
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So if you're shooting really, really fast action,
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or you're trying to get a shot of like, a bird diving into water or something,
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this is probably not the camera for you,
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but for those of you who are okay with one over 2000 or lower,
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then this camera would be a high performer in many other situations.
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Man, this camera is so weird because normally,
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you'd see like a bunch of dials and buttons and stuff like AF Lock or Record,
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and all of that is done through the touchscreen. The only button you see is this one,
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which can only... It's a custom button, but it can only be set to four different things.
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Maybe they'll change that in a future firmware update, 'cause this is running Android.
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So they have the ability to do a firmware update where they would add functionality to a button like this,
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but for now, it only has four things available.
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And then you have the little focus magnifier for the EVF.
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There's a Type-C port on the left here. And then when we open the battery door,
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there's a battery, but what's missing?
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The SD card slot. So typically the SD card slot in the camera is,
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right next to the battery. But in this camera, there is no SD card slot,
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because it has a built-in 512 gig SSD.
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Which is cool, but, I mean, you're stuck with 512 gigs.
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That's probably enough, 'cause you'll probably just offload your photos,
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and then share them, or like they want you to,
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edit them on this camera and then share them from this.
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Zeiss has designed a swiping system.
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So this is how you get to your settings, where you can set raw JPEG.
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That's cool. And then there's also video. So this (mumbles) can shoot 4K up to 30fps,
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and 60fps up to full HD. Which is not amazing by today's standard.
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So from gallery view, here's a photo of my cat,
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you can get to the Android view, which gives you Instagram
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and Lightroom built into the camera. Now, unfortunately, as far as I can tell,
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the only Android apps that you can install on this camera are Instagram and Lightroom.
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Which is great if you're a heavy Instagram user, but if you want to upload something like Twitter, Facebook,
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or Snapchat, like, some other social media of any kind,
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you should be able to install it and use it on this camera,
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but there is no... When I go to the settings, there's no Play Store.
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All you get is manual support tutorial, Instagram, and Lightroom.
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You can connect Dropbox and Anes,
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at home to this. So you can wirelessly transfer your photos from this camera
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to ANES or Dropbox, and then access them that way.
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But that seems like a sort of roundabout way to do this.
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Why don't we try this camera, and take a couple photos of Colton,
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and see what it's like from a professional user's perspective
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and a amateur user's perspective. - Oh my gosh, and it's running like Android 9 or something.
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- It's a little bit dated on the Android side. Maybe there's an over the air update sometime.
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- It's probably not Android 9 I'm so... Or it might be. It might be Android 8.
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This looks like Oreo or something. - [Lee] You can use the touchscreen
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to navigate the settings on with the display off.
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So you can touch the glass display right now, navigate stuff.
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- Interesting. I don't like it at all.
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(Lee laughs) Get out of here.
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All right, Madison, like I said, scream.
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(Madison screams) (man in cap laughs) - As someone who doesn't use cameras like this
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most of the time, what did you think of this brief experience?
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- Well, I guess I'm not the perfect example for that. Am I? Because I have used like DSLRs and stuff,
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and I like kind of the tactile clickiness. I like having it feel
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sort of like it's a professional thing. - So would you that this is two minimalist?
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- You know what? It does make sense if the market for this
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is the same people who buy like, - It's like obvious.
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- The most expensive Tesla or like,
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the iMac Pro 5K when they have absolutely no need for it.
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- How much would you pay for this? - Oh, I'd probably pay
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3000, 3,500. - 3500? - Yeah.
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- It is six grand US. (man in cap groans)
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So I'm gonna give this to somebody who's used cameras a lot and is a photo enthusiast.
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We have Andy here. - Hello. The grip, like,
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if you see this part, I'm still using my finger tip to grab the grip,
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instead of have my whole hand on the grip.
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There's like a gap, you see that? - [Lee] Yeah. - So I'm not a big fan of the grip.
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I'm changing the ISO here. Unlike the other,
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mirrorless camera, or you change the ISO the exposure on screen also, change.
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But this thing, only if you have pressed the shutter.
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- [Lee] Oh, you don't get a preview live? - [Andy] You don't get a preview live.
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That's very strange. And then you can actually navigate the touchscreen
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when you are looking through the EVF. So if you put your thumb here.
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- Oh, it's got the little like circle type of thing. - [Andy] There's a little mouse thing.
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Right now if I'm using my finger on the screen, I'm definitely like heating my face--
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- Your face. - [Andy] Which is not great. Okay.
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- Would you edit your photos on the camera? - Oh, that's tough.
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'Cause editing a photo on a small screen, feels kinda a bit weird.
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Especially when you shoot a lot of photo, and then you want to add it a batch of photo,
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that's kind of, dumb. So how much would you pay for this camera?
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- I'll probably just pay like four grand, 'cause because this is a Zeiss,
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and Zeiss-- - They know how to make lenses, and they used to make good film cameras.
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- And they're like still hired higher tier,
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compared to regular Sony, regular Sony lens cameras.
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- This camera's $6,000 US.
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- Oof, that's a little bit harsh. - Okay, so we're back from trying the camera out.
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Let's see how easy this photo is to get into Lightroom.
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I could even just hit the Share button, right?
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Share.
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- [Lee] Oh, you can go to Facebook. So you have Dropbox, Flickr and OneDrive.
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Okay. I mean, personally, even as someone who loves taking photos and does it all the time,
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I don't really share my photos on Flickr. So that's a little bit of an odd decision.
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And so the Share button actually doesn't take you into Lightroom, but I think just swiping down here.
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And now we're in Lightroom . Go to All Photos.
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So bring in one of the photos into Lightroom,
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it's loading, loading... It's a raw photo. So I understand why might a little bit to load.
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See if we can adjust the white balance easily.
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I'll give Adobe credit. Lightroom mobile,
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is fairly powerful because it's essentially Lightroom in a much smaller,
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phone factor. But I will say right off the bat
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that these sliders are a little bit on the annoying side to adjust,
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'cause they're not easy to do, in like one degree increments.
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The sharpness is pretty good.
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Like me looking at the back of this display,
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it's only a 720P display, but the sharpness on the back of this display,
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is pretty good. Of course it might be better or worse
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when you actually look at it on a computer or on any sort of bigger display.
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But most things like this will probably look good on your phone,
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because it's such a small display. I don't know if Zeiss has a winner here.
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I understand that they designed this camera from the ground up, which is probably why it costs $6,000.
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It's not easy to engineer something in-house entirely.
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So it's a good achievement, respect Zeiss, you guys know what you're doing,
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but I don't see a lot of people buying this camera. Because for the amount of money this costs,
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there's just so many other options that I think would be better for most people.
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But if you are one of the people who would buy this camera, let me know in the comments down below.
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I hope more cameras in the future integrate smart features like this.
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Maybe even to edit your photos on your camera, if you need to.
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But to edit on such a tiny display while holding a heavy-ish camera,
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isn't the most ergonomic experience.
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And so I think that most people will skip this.
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But, good job Zeiss for making something really different.
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This is a camera that no one's really done to this level of engineering before,
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but it does feel quite gen one. Thank you to BNH for sending us the ZX1,
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and thank you guys for watching. If you want to watch another camera video, we recently-ish did a video on the Sony FX6.
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And we have a video coming up on the Leica, SL2-S.