So how does the Sony ZV-1 hold up against our fully riggers cinema camera?
Well, I'll just tell you there's a reason
why we're calling this a mini cinema camera.
Hey, guys, Mike here from Envy Creative.
So today we're we're going to be talking about and comparing the Sony ZV-1 to our
cinema camera and maybe some other DSLR cameras.
So as you might have seen in our past videos, we're always really impressed
with the Sony ZV-1 and the picture and the content that we can get out of it.
So as you may or may not know here
at Envy Creative, we like to put gear through its paces
and really do real world comparisons that other reviews may only touch on.
But since we're a full service production
company, we really like to put gear in a real world working environment.
So first, let's get all the boring stuff
out of the way that you could probably just Google about the Sony ZV-1.
It's been a very popular camera
with content creators because of all of the features that are packed into it.
Like the 4K image you get out of it, the in body stabilization,
the flip out LCD screen, the built in microphone,
the built in microphone Jack, the built in ND filter, the 1.8 aperture.
And the most important thing is it's small
enough when it's compact to put in your pocket.
So with all the boring stuff out of the way, let's get into the comparison
and how it actually works in a real world environment.
So first up, let's talk about the video quality.
Now on the Sony ZV-1, it does shoot in 4K video.
It can shoot in MOV or MP4, it doesn't shoot in RAW and it can shoot
in S-log as well as some other built in picture profiles.
Now, compared to our cinema camera,
our Cinema camera does shoot in 4K RAW, which lets you play a lot with the colors
and really dial in the grade to your footage.
But with the Sony, we did try out the S-log,
but we really ended up just going back to one of the builtin presets because
of how good the image looks coming straight out of camera.
And here is the S-log footage.
And like I said, since we're doing a comparison,
here's some footage of our cinema camera shot in 4K RAW and then graded.
And then here's a side by side of the picture profile we like to use
on the Sony ZV-1 compared to the 4K RAW graded on our Canon C200.
As you can see the picture that you get
out of the Sony ZV-1 is really, really impressive even compared
to a camera that's much more expensive than the Sony ZV-1 with different
lenses you can use and all the bells and whistles attached to it.
One of the other cool things about the Sony ZV-1 is it does have high
frame rates that you can use for slow motion.
It even has specific modes to give you
the highest frame rate for the best slow motion.
So the next thing we're going to talk about is the lens on the Sony ZV-1.
So this is an f1.8 lens, and this is a lens that you would find
on a lot of cameras with interchangeable lenses.
A lot of people like f1.8,
the Sony ZV-1 does have a really cool mode.
It's called blurred background mode,
and it's a little button right on top they can actually press,
and it's more of an automatic mode that can dial in the settings to make it
so that it has the best background blur as possible.
Really what people are looking for most
of the time in a camera and a lens, however, because we are using it sometimes
in a production environment, we want more control over the picture.
So we rarely, rarely use that unless we just can't dial it in.
But 99% of the time we can.
And what I mean by that is, say,
if you have a 1.8 aperture, then that means it's going to be really bright.
So you need to bring down, say, the ISO and add a ND filter on it,
which this does have a built in ND filter, but you need to bring all the brightness
down a little bit just to be able to get that background image while keeping
everything in focus and looking good, because with the button that blurs out
the background automatically, it does raise the shutter speed,
which can also make your footage look a little less cinematic.
And again, as a comparison,
here's our cinema camera with our f1.8 lens on there.
Now, obviously, the blurred background is
going to be better on the cinema camera just because of the bigger sensor
and the specific interchangeable lens that we're using.
But you can see that the Sony ZV-1
does a great job for this small of a camera getting that great picture.
So next, let's talk about the screen.
So this has a flip out screen, and it can also tuck back in.
Now, a lot of content creators really like this so that when they're filming,
they can actually see themselves and their eyeline isn't too far from the lens.
Now with our cinema camera, we actually have two monitors on there.
We have one for the operator and we have
a secondary one for either the boom operator or for the actors.
Or if we're doing a close up shot of hands and we need to see what it looks like
while we're shooting. Our one screen for the operator does flip around,
but it's kind of hard to position and get back in place the way we want it.
So we just leave it there and we use the other monitor.
So let's talk about audio next.
Now, the Sony ZV-1 actually has a pretty decent built in mic right at the top here.
But it also has a mic jack on the side
that you can attach an external microphone to.
Now, we rarely, rarely use the built
in microphone on the top, again, because we use this in more
of a production environment, and we want to make sure we're having clean audio.
But in a pinch, if you maybe need to use
it for a quick voiceover, I'm sure if you hold it up to your face
like this, I'm sure it will be fine for a voiceover, but if you're talking
further away, you may want to get an external microphone.
So because this has just a 3.5 millimeter microphone jack, if we're talking a little
further from the camera, we'll use something like our Rode Wireless Go mic.
And if we're talking close to the camera, we'll use our new Sennheiser mic that we
got specifically for this camera that runs off battery and also turns on when
the camera turns on as well, which is a nice way to save battery, too.
Now, on our cinema camera, there are lots of different ports for audio.
There are two built in XLR ports, which will give you the cleanest audio,
because that is production quality audio, but it also does have a 3.5 millimeter
microphone Jack where you can plug in things like a Road wireless go.
But right now we actually have
an on camera boom plugged into the microphone Jack just as a backup channel.
So here are a couple of examples of the Sony ZV-1's audio.
First is an example of the audio from the built in microphone.
Here's an example of the audio
with the Road Wireless Go mic plugged in to the microphone Jack.
And here's an example of the Sennheiser on camera mic.
Again, plugged into the microphone jack.
And for comparison,
here's our cinema camera with one of our Sennheiser wireless mics plugged in.
And an example of the shotgun mic we have plugged
in to use as a backup audio or our scratch audio.
As you can hear again, the Sony ZV-1. Does a great job
with the audio processing, and you can really get a clean sound out of it.
So next we're going to talk about stabilization.
So this camera actually has some cool features regarding stabilization.
It has really good in body stabilization that you can turn on either standard or
active. Standard is usually the one you'll want to stick with.
Active kind of crops in a little bit, but gives you even more smooth shots.
But it can be jittery that we noticed at times.
It also has what's called a gyro stabilization,
which you can use with software that's provided by Sony called Catalyst.
And what you do is you actually turn off
the in body stabilization and it activates the gyroscope inside of the camera
that you can actually bring into Sony's software and that you can stabilize there.
It does crop in a little bit,
but it actually sets really, really smooth shots.
Almost gimbal-like.
One of the other great things about this camera is because it's so small you
can actually use pretty cheap gimbals with it.
For our Sony ZV-1, we use the Zhiyun M2,
and it's just a couple hundred dollar gimbal because it's made for very small cameras.
And this is about the biggest camera
that will fit on it and that the motors will support.
So as with our cinema camera,
the cinema camera doesn't have any stabilization features at all.
And a lot of the lenses you use for cinema
cameras also don't have any stabilization features, so you pretty much need to rig
it out with a shoulder rig so that you're getting your hands as far away
from the lens as possible so that you can get the smoothest shots as possible.
Now, ever since we upgraded to our cinema camera, we actually haven't bought
a gimbal for it because we always have it rigged out.
And because gimbals to support the weight
of this kind of camera is really expensive.
So we have never invested in one.
Instead, we've invested in the shoulder
rig for the camera. As you can see it's a little bit bumpy.
So if we need smooth gimbal shots,
we actually are turning to our Sony ZV-1 for those really smooth shots.
Now we're going to talk about the autofocus with the Sony ZV-1.
Now, out of a lot of Sony cameras I've tried over the years,
I actually like the Sony ZV-1's autofocus better than all of them.
It has really good face tracking.
It even has eye tracking to get really crisp focus on your eyes.
And it has a really cool feature called Product Showcase Mode.
So if you're holding a product and you're in focus, but then you hold the product up
to the camera, it will actually snap focus on that product.
Now on cinema cameras,
especially Sony and Canon, you do have the ability to have auto
focus, but you need a lens to support that.
And with a lot of cinema cameras,
they don't have autofocus on the lens, so you have to pull focus manually.
One other kind of cool feature about this is it actually does have a beauty mode
where it kind of goes in and it just makes your skin a little bit nicer and a little
bit clearer in camera so that you don't have to do makeup before or you don't have
to do some sort of skin softening in postproduction.
Now let's talk about some of the things that I either wish the Sony ZV-1 had
or some of the downsides before you jump in and start using it.
First of all, the battery on this is pretty bad.
I would say it would last an hour, maybe two of shooting,
and you should definitely get some extra batteries for it. On Amazon
you can get them for pretty cheap
in double packs, so you can always have a couple of extra batteries standing by,
whereas with our cinema camera, you can get big,
d-tap batteries that can power your whole rig, or even a lot of batteries
that just attached directly to the camera give really good battery life as well.
Next, even though the stabilization is
really cool with Sony Catalyst, where you can get gimbal like shots,
the one thing that we noticed is that if you use it with a low shutter speed,
sometimes you can get jitters in the post processing of the stabilization.
Now, the one way to get really smooth
stabilization is to increase the shutter speed.
But by doing that, your footage may not look as cinematic as you'd like.
So if you want smooth shots that are real
time, the best way to go is probably with active stabilization.
But if you want smooth shots that are very
gimbal like and you want them to maybe be in slow motion, then a high shutter speed
is perfectly fine because then you'll get smooth slow motion as well.
Another thing is to test your microphones first.
Now we kind of learned this the hard way.
Again, we use these for a lot of our YouTube videos, and we did have another
Sennheiser on camera microphone that I didn't test it,
and I shot an entire YouTube video with it, and none of the footage was
usable because we were getting really bad audio buzz with the microphone.
So before you start recording,
just make sure you vest your microphone to make sure it works well with your camera.
The new Sennheiser microphone that we got works perfectly.
The other Sennheiser microphone works well with all of our other cameras,
so I'm not sure why it doesn't work really well with this, but just make sure you
test your microphones and regarding exposure on the Sony ZV-1, because we
are used to our cinema cameras, we have what's called zebras turned on,
which shows you overexposed places in the image.
And one thing we found is that the zebras
on the Sony ZV-1 are not very reliable, so we actually make things darker than
they have to be, and we have to make them brighter in postproduction because it's
saying that stuff is blown out and it's overexposed where it's really not.
So just kind of keep that in the back
of your head when you're exposing for the shot.
So you know, if you need to add more light
or take more light away, we really like that.
It has a built in ND filter.
It can really save you in a pinch if it's really bright out.
And even though the built in ND is really
cool, we would still suggest picking up one of these.
This is a variable ND filter where you screw it on right here and then you can
just change the different ND stops just by turning it like that.
The other thing is, we wish that the Sony
had a bit of a wider lens, but you can also pick up a wide angle lens
for it where you screw this on and it becomes a wide angle lens.
If you take off this little part as well, you can actually screw this on and use it
as a macro lens, which is really nice for very close up shots.
We didn't even know this until we accidentally forgot to put this on and we
were using this instead. Before we keep going
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So overall, you can tell that we're really impressed by the Sony ZV-1 and all
it's capable of, and
it really is a mini cinema camera when you compare it to a big full cinema camera.
Thanks so much, guys, for watching.
And if you have any questions about
the Sony ZV-1 or anything else we talked about, feel free to leave it
in the comments below and we'll catch you next time.