When this comparatively small point and shoot camera was released by Sony in September 2020, there was plenty of positive feedback/reviews as well as some slight critisisms. This is something not unsual for any new camera that appears on the market, but due to the marketing almost being laser-focusced directly at bloggers/vloggers/influencers, it might have done this little one-inch sensor camera more harm than good.
The feedback from many professional vloggers (we aren't those people) was that the lens was not wide enough at 24-equiv. We do tend to agree, but tripods or other options can help, it justs adds more expense when you make your purchase.
Since we don't vlog, we purchased to make it another tool to add to our content creation toolbox (or should we say backpack). And what sold us wasn't the super slow motion options, not the 4K30, not the amazing Sony auto focus (including eye tracking), but something much more simple than that.
We (and you as well), have a requirement to create vertical content for social media for both ourselves and for the clients that engage us. So in order for us to generate this content and turn it around in the fastest way possible, having a dedicated camera setup specifically to shoot portrait videos is an absolute time and life saver.
Let's give you a prime example:
- We recently had to film a corporate talking head interview for a particular company for their YouTube and social media channels. So we setup as per normal, a wide shot, closeup shot, external recording for audio, lights in all the correct positions. Then off to the side again, we had our little ZV-1, setup in portrait mode on a tripod, plugged into mains power, using the inbuilt microphones for scratch audio and off we went as per normal. Obviously everything was framed and composed so the subject was in shot, the lighting was "good enough" to further reduce the work in post. We also had an all Sony camera body day, so that came in particularly handy when it came to matching colours (it wasn't perfect, but definitely good enough).
- So fast-forward to post and all we had to do was sync up the audio, edit for the soundbites and it was pretty much all done. No need to worry about reframing, cropping, or whatever tricks/hacks to extract a 9:16 from a 16:9 - huge timesaver.
- Taking the camera out of the work enviornment, it is the perfect camera-camera (i.e. not phone) to use when out and about with friends and family. Switch it to 1080 to get the 50/60fps if you want to do some nice slow down later; keep it as open as possible to get better depth of field than your phone for photos and video, and never have to worry about the audio at all. All the while, saving your expensive camera bodies and lenses from those busy nights out, or having the kids grab it whilst you aren't looking.
- We even through on a SmallRig cage and grabbed some other accessories like the Ulanzi wide angle/macro lens (which we have had a bit of trouble with, we will save that for another post) and the Ulanzi VL49 RGB lights.
At this price, there are other options like Fuji X-E4, Canon m50, etc, so feel free to explore your options. But when you are already working with other Sony bodies, or you want near perfect auto-focus at this price, the ZV-1 is your only real option.