Sony ZV-1 review 2 months later - Yes, it's still the best

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhen sony released the zv1 lots of people called it the ultimate the perfect even the best vlogging camera out there so two months later i wanted to see if that was still the case my name's lexi and i make videos for cnet and like many of you over the past few months i have been fortunate enough to be able to work from home but that has meant that i've had to turn my house pretty much upside down and make my surrounds into a makeshift studio so when sony released this camera it seemed like it checked so many of the boxes for things that i was looking for to make my life a lot easier as a content creator filming pretty much everything herself so it has the flip out screen which is great for framing something that i really struggle with without an external monitor attached it has eye tracking af so it ensures that i'm always going to be in focus when i'm in the frame and talking to you and it has a lot of extra creative picture effects and modes such as that super high frame rate shooting look i'm going to tell you straight off the bat spoiler alert this camera is really really good but there are some catches and i'm going to share with you my impressions and some samples of having used it over the past couple of weeks there are hundreds of reviews of this little camera out there that cover all the specs you could possibly want so instead of rehashing all that this is how the zb1 has fit into my workflow and the ways i've been using it that might help you out so first up this camera is really well thought out for video there's a big record button up the top there's a tally light and a sturdy grip i found the biggest issue for me was the location of the tripod mount so i couldn't swap out the battery or change the card if the camera was on a grip or on a tripod and the touchscreen is only used for touch shutter focus or tracking rather than being able to select menu options it took me a little while to get used to that i've been using this sony on its own and in conjunction with this the gp vp ii bt xyz look sony's not great with product names i just wish it was called the grip or something easy to remember but naming aside this is actually a really solid companion to the zv1 i found it much more useful than i was expecting to be honest i thought it was just going to be a glorified selfie stick but actually it's come in so handy especially when i've needed a quick tripod just to set and do a shot i've also been able to use some walk and talks with it as well and the controls are all really well laid out i like them a lot just because it's just they fall under the thumb really nicely i do wish though that it did have a way to feed power back to the zv1 maybe the next iteration of the grip could do that just because as i'll talk about in a little bit battery life is somewhat of a problem if you've watched some reviews of this camera previously you would probably hear people talking about the field of view not quite being wide enough at that 24 millimeter reach for vlogging applications like this anyway i actually didn't find that this was the biggest problem for this kind of length because i don't shoot too much like this for a prolonged period of time but i did find that i would have wanted a slightly wider lens when i was doing things like landscapes especially because i was coming from say a smartphone where i did have the option to go out to that ultra wide so it just would have been nice to have a little bit more flexibility i've been so impressed with the image quality from this little camera and the fact that if i want to just put it in automatic intelligent auto and just run and go off and shoot something i have full faith that this camera is going to be able to choose the settings that are the best for the scene it's got s-log 2 which is great if you wanted to do more grading applications i also love background defocus now that's off that is on look i know it's just aperture priority mode essentially and you're just opening up and stopping down right but it's still nice just to have a button there especially if i'm in an auto mode and just want to achieve that nice shallow depth of field without having to fuss too much about it the built-in neutral density filter has also been super useful when i have been shooting outside the skin smoothing feature is also something that you're going to use all the time or you're never going to touch and it's going to stay on off i have it on medium setting at the moment and i've used it both indoors and outdoors i really quite like the effect and just gives a little extra oomph to my face but the one thing i did notice when i was doing an indoor versus outdoor shot one with a ring light an artificial light one with just outdoor diffused san francisco gray fog like like now is that it looked a little bit otherworldly with the ring light in kind of a lower light setting with artificial light and my video editor also commented it's like it doesn't quite look like you it's kind of cool but it's a little bit too much so maybe for that situation i would dial it down to a lower or turn it off altogether setting all right let's talk stabilization because you're going to walk and probably you're going to talk and the zv1 has a couple different levels the first you can turn it off completely the second is standard and the third is active so this is what you're seeing now is actually the standard stabilization so take a look i'm not doing anything too dramatic in terms of my movements okay active uh this mode actually uses ois and digital stabilization it makes a big difference and this is the mode that i would use if i was doing a lot of tracking shots however it does crop in a little bit more into the image so this is kind of the same level that i was holding it before for the general shot with the standard stabilization and i guess it's cutting off a little bit of my head so i would probably have to hold it out at the full extent of my arm like that in order to get more of me in the frame okay and just because i can here is a sideways side of the active stabilization versus the iphone 11 pro which uses similar stabilization optical and electronic to achieve a cinematic effect audio time because where is a good video without good sound in the bin that's where it is so i've actually found the internal mic on the zv1 is actually pretty decent it's a directional microphone so it's fine when i'm talking and there's not too much external noise going on but i did want to do a bit of an audio test just to hear the difference so you can hear it this is the internal mic on the zv one with the wind guard on top and then i'm also going to plug in an external mic into the sony so you can take a listen as well this time with the rode video micro in the hot seats and i have noticed that i do have to adjust the levels down quite a bit because this is quite hot and i can't actually monitor it because there's no headphone jack in the zv1 it's not such a big deal for me because i'm actually okay with monitoring well at least just looking at the levels visually and seeing that obviously it's a bit too loud so i have to bring it down but i can see why some people would really want a headphone jack it would be nice but i think it's an okay compromise to make given the price of this camera something i've used before on more expensive sony cameras but i love that it's in the zv1 is the high frame rate mode so you can shoot at 240 480 or 960 frames a second gives you some really cool results even though it's not something i would use on a daily basis i love that it's there and even though this is a video first camera i was impressed with the still image quality from the zv1 it was really good to know that i could shoot my video and also get a sharp product image without having to pull out my dslr all right let's talk battery because that has been the biggest disappointment for me about this camera which is almost otherwise perfect i love the image quality i love the 4k and everything else this powerhouse can do but the battery just doesn't last very long at all in fact it's under an hour if you're filming lots of individual 4k clips and it also charges the battery in camera through micro usb rather than usb-c so definitely go and buy a separate charger if i was going to use this constantly to shoot more than about 45 minutes of footage so the biggest tips that i can give you if you buy this camera number one is make sure you set that auto power off temperature too high so you don't end up in a situation where you can't record longer clips i would also immediately suggest to turn off bluetooth and wi-fi to prolong the battery if you're not using the grip because i found that created a huge drain obviously if you're shooting in 4k it's going to use battery a lot faster than if you're shooting at 1080 and when you pull it out of the box it's set to 1080 not 4k so do go change that has the sony zv1 fulfilled its promise that all of those reviewers and vloggers were telling me perfect burst ultimate yeah it actually kind of has i think for my applications it's been super useful someone that's doing stuff both indoors and outdoors wants the flexibility of being able to just set forget and just sit and talk it's really good for that i also like how i can get more in depth into the menus i can really get into the manual controls and i can also do all those picture modes slog2 etc if i do want to have the most flexibility out of this camera i think the one application for the vlogger or content creator that this might not be best for is if you are doing a lot of walk and talks for that i would probably say that a smartphone might be a little better just because of stabilization that is unless you want to buy a gimbal with the zv1 which does make a huge difference and it also means that you can probably hold it out a little better as well but it would get heavier which kind of defeats the point of getting a really compact camera anyway that one inch sensor is just really nice i love the image quality and now i guess i have to go and spend 750 on this camera because it does actually do pretty much everything that i need it to i really like itwhen sony released the zv1 lots of people called it the ultimate the perfect even the best vlogging camera out there so two months later i wanted to see if that was still the case my name's lexi and i make videos for cnet and like many of you over the past few months i have been fortunate enough to be able to work from home but that has meant that i've had to turn my house pretty much upside down and make my surrounds into a makeshift studio so when sony released this camera it seemed like it checked so many of the boxes for things that i was looking for to make my life a lot easier as a content creator filming pretty much everything herself so it has the flip out screen which is great for framing something that i really struggle with without an external monitor attached it has eye tracking af so it ensures that i'm always going to be in focus when i'm in the frame and talking to you and it has a lot of extra creative picture effects and modes such as that super high frame rate shooting look i'm going to tell you straight off the bat spoiler alert this camera is really really good but there are some catches and i'm going to share with you my impressions and some samples of having used it over the past couple of weeks there are hundreds of reviews of this little camera out there that cover all the specs you could possibly want so instead of rehashing all that this is how the zb1 has fit into my workflow and the ways i've been using it that might help you out so first up this camera is really well thought out for video there's a big record button up the top there's a tally light and a sturdy grip i found the biggest issue for me was the location of the tripod mount so i couldn't swap out the battery or change the card if the camera was on a grip or on a tripod and the touchscreen is only used for touch shutter focus or tracking rather than being able to select menu options it took me a little while to get used to that i've been using this sony on its own and in conjunction with this the gp vp ii bt xyz look sony's not great with product names i just wish it was called the grip or something easy to remember but naming aside this is actually a really solid companion to the zv1 i found it much more useful than i was expecting to be honest i thought it was just going to be a glorified selfie stick but actually it's come in so handy especially when i've needed a quick tripod just to set and do a shot i've also been able to use some walk and talks with it as well and the controls are all really well laid out i like them a lot just because it's just they fall under the thumb really nicely i do wish though that it did have a way to feed power back to the zv1 maybe the next iteration of the grip could do that just because as i'll talk about in a little bit battery life is somewhat of a problem if you've watched some reviews of this camera previously you would probably hear people talking about the field of view not quite being wide enough at that 24 millimeter reach for vlogging applications like this anyway i actually didn't find that this was the biggest problem for this kind of length because i don't shoot too much like this for a prolonged period of time but i did find that i would have wanted a slightly wider lens when i was doing things like landscapes especially because i was coming from say a smartphone where i did have the option to go out to that ultra wide so it just would have been nice to have a little bit more flexibility i've been so impressed with the image quality from this little camera and the fact that if i want to just put it in automatic intelligent auto and just run and go off and shoot something i have full faith that this camera is going to be able to choose the settings that are the best for the scene it's got s-log 2 which is great if you wanted to do more grading applications i also love background defocus now that's off that is on look i know it's just aperture priority mode essentially and you're just opening up and stopping down right but it's still nice just to have a button there especially if i'm in an auto mode and just want to achieve that nice shallow depth of field without having to fuss too much about it the built-in neutral density filter has also been super useful when i have been shooting outside the skin smoothing feature is also something that you're going to use all the time or you're never going to touch and it's going to stay on off i have it on medium setting at the moment and i've used it both indoors and outdoors i really quite like the effect and just gives a little extra oomph to my face but the one thing i did notice when i was doing an indoor versus outdoor shot one with a ring light an artificial light one with just outdoor diffused san francisco gray fog like like now is that it looked a little bit otherworldly with the ring light in kind of a lower light setting with artificial light and my video editor also commented it's like it doesn't quite look like you it's kind of cool but it's a little bit too much so maybe for that situation i would dial it down to a lower or turn it off altogether setting all right let's talk stabilization because you're going to walk and probably you're going to talk and the zv1 has a couple different levels the first you can turn it off completely the second is standard and the third is active so this is what you're seeing now is actually the standard stabilization so take a look i'm not doing anything too dramatic in terms of my movements okay active uh this mode actually uses ois and digital stabilization it makes a big difference and this is the mode that i would use if i was doing a lot of tracking shots however it does crop in a little bit more into the image so this is kind of the same level that i was holding it before for the general shot with the standard stabilization and i guess it's cutting off a little bit of my head so i would probably have to hold it out at the full extent of my arm like that in order to get more of me in the frame okay and just because i can here is a sideways side of the active stabilization versus the iphone 11 pro which uses similar stabilization optical and electronic to achieve a cinematic effect audio time because where is a good video without good sound in the bin that's where it is so i've actually found the internal mic on the zv1 is actually pretty decent it's a directional microphone so it's fine when i'm talking and there's not too much external noise going on but i did want to do a bit of an audio test just to hear the difference so you can hear it this is the internal mic on the zv one with the wind guard on top and then i'm also going to plug in an external mic into the sony so you can take a listen as well this time with the rode video micro in the hot seats and i have noticed that i do have to adjust the levels down quite a bit because this is quite hot and i can't actually monitor it because there's no headphone jack in the zv1 it's not such a big deal for me because i'm actually okay with monitoring well at least just looking at the levels visually and seeing that obviously it's a bit too loud so i have to bring it down but i can see why some people would really want a headphone jack it would be nice but i think it's an okay compromise to make given the price of this camera something i've used before on more expensive sony cameras but i love that it's in the zv1 is the high frame rate mode so you can shoot at 240 480 or 960 frames a second gives you some really cool results even though it's not something i would use on a daily basis i love that it's there and even though this is a video first camera i was impressed with the still image quality from the zv1 it was really good to know that i could shoot my video and also get a sharp product image without having to pull out my dslr all right let's talk battery because that has been the biggest disappointment for me about this camera which is almost otherwise perfect i love the image quality i love the 4k and everything else this powerhouse can do but the battery just doesn't last very long at all in fact it's under an hour if you're filming lots of individual 4k clips and it also charges the battery in camera through micro usb rather than usb-c so definitely go and buy a separate charger if i was going to use this constantly to shoot more than about 45 minutes of footage so the biggest tips that i can give you if you buy this camera number one is make sure you set that auto power off temperature too high so you don't end up in a situation where you can't record longer clips i would also immediately suggest to turn off bluetooth and wi-fi to prolong the battery if you're not using the grip because i found that created a huge drain obviously if you're shooting in 4k it's going to use battery a lot faster than if you're shooting at 1080 and when you pull it out of the box it's set to 1080 not 4k so do go change that has the sony zv1 fulfilled its promise that all of those reviewers and vloggers were telling me perfect burst ultimate yeah it actually kind of has i think for my applications it's been super useful someone that's doing stuff both indoors and outdoors wants the flexibility of being able to just set forget and just sit and talk it's really good for that i also like how i can get more in depth into the menus i can really get into the manual controls and i can also do all those picture modes slog2 etc if i do want to have the most flexibility out of this camera i think the one application for the vlogger or content creator that this might not be best for is if you are doing a lot of walk and talks for that i would probably say that a smartphone might be a little better just because of stabilization that is unless you want to buy a gimbal with the zv1 which does make a huge difference and it also means that you can probably hold it out a little better as well but it would get heavier which kind of defeats the point of getting a really compact camera anyway that one inch sensor is just really nice i love the image quality and now i guess i have to go and spend 750 on this camera because it does actually do pretty much everything that i need it to i really like it\n"