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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Sony ZV-E10 Mark
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II vlogging based camera, which is why I'm out right now in the woods doing things a
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little bit differently to open up this particular video. Now the ZV-E10 Mark II is the second generation of Sony's vlogging specific camera, but one
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that is based around an interchangeable lens mount. And so in this case, it allows you to choose the lens that you're going to use as opposed
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to having a fixed lens, be it a prime or a zoom lens
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Now there is an available kit lens that I'm using at the moment, and that is the second
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generation of their 16 to 50 millimeter power zoom lens. And so with that is the ability to control power zoom right from within the camera
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Now the ZV-E10 has some significant upgrades to it, and that includes the sensor from the
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A6700, which gives you a higher resolution at 26 megapixels. It also has improved autofocus system that is largely inherited from the A6700 as well
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It's got an upgraded battery and a variety of other features that we'll detail as a part
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of today's review. Does that sound interesting? Well, if so, stay tuned and we're going to dive into all of the details right after a
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ready to check out. So the ZV-E10 Mark II has grown a little bit, and that is for a very specific reason
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The camera is now 114.8mm wide, 67.5mm tall, and 54.2mm deep
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That's 4.5 inches by 2.7 inches by 2.1 inches. That means we've gained 3mm in height, we have gained 5.5mm in depth
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You can see from these comparison angles that there's a definite difference in the overall
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depth of the camera in particular. That's where you see it. But the reason for that is to accommodate, it's a very positive change, because it's
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to accommodate the much larger MPFZ100 battery that is found in most of Sony's better cameras
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And so that takes us up to 2280 mAh compared, which more than doubles the battery capacity
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I think the other is 1060. And so we have got a definite improvement there
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So what that means is that the SEPA rating on this camera goes from 440 shots on the
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original ZV-E10 to 610 shots here on the Mark II version. Probably even more importantly, however, the 4K video recording time goes from 80 minutes
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up to 130 minutes here. And for a vlogging specific camera, it's much more disruptive in my opinion to have a battery
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die in the middle of a video capture than what it is in the midst of shooting stills
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It's always disruptive, but much more so then where it might throw off your edit and your rhythm
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You know, you might miss a shot that you're not going to get back. And so getting that extra 50 minutes of recording time obviously is pretty huge, particularly
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if you're... The point of this obviously is to travel light. So if you're wanting to go out with maybe just the camera with the battery in it for
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the day, not carrying any additional accessories, you're much more likely to be able to do that
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successfully here due to that larger battery. And kind of a secondary benefit is that the grip here is actually much, much better
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There's enough depth there. Obviously the camera's still not tall enough that for a hand my size, I still have to put
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my pinky and park it underneath there. But my other fingers are actually fairly comfortable and the grip itself feels quite comfortable
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So I consider that all to be a positive change. And yes, the weight is up, I believe about 30 grams
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Now with the battery memory card included, we're right under 300 grams in terms of overall weight
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But again, I think it's all a positive change to get you that extra battery capacity
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A little bit of extra room on that grip also allows for a slight recalibration of the controls
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The control layout here is largely similar. You can see in these shots that if we look at the back, it looks pretty much the same
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from the side angles, even from the front. Most things look the same other than the difference in depth
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But at the top view here, we see that the on-off switch, rather than just being kind
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of on an island in the center of the camera on the top plate, is now moved up to where
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it can be operated one-handed. Now I do find just because of muscle memory, that because a lot of Sony cameras, I can
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turn it on and off right there. I tend to activate the power zoom instead, but there is a secondary lever there that
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allows you to switch between on and off. And again, being able to do that one-handed, I think is very useful
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It cleans up the control scheme overall. The other difference here, which I think is again a positive one, is that we have an actual
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switch to go between stills, video, and then S&Q, which is slow and quick setups here
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rather than a button that causes you to have to interact with the LCD screen to accomplish that
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The direct switch, I think, is just direct, and so it allows you to just very quickly and visually switch to the mode that you want
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So overall, I would consider that to be a very positive. Now this camera is unique compared to most Sony cameras in that you do have the power
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zoom controls that are actually integrated right there onto the front of the grip
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Now if you've got an actual power zoom equipped lens, like the kit lens here, it means that
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you can, right from there, you can zoom smoothly in and out, which is obviously a very welcome
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thing to be able to do that. But I was curious and discovered that yes, in fact, that if you are operating in video
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mode and you're shooting, for example, either digital zoom or even better, just the clear
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image zoom that Sony allows using that extra bit of sensor that's not being used in 4K
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recording, it actually can control any lens in that zoom fashion, not just a power zoom
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type lens. So here, for example, I'm shooting with just a prime lens, the Viltrox 56mm f1.7, and the
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ability to actually zoom back and forth a bit is extremely useful, obviously, because
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you're doing that in a smoother fashion than if you were trying to control that from within
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the camera itself some way. Your other option is to do that from some kind of grip where it's using Bluetooth, and
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that's useful as well. But again, if you're going for self-contained, that makes it even more useful and more compact there
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Now, the other, out on the top, outside of those things, we have the video record button
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obviously important in a camera like this. And then we also have a C1 slash background to focus button
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Now, a couple of things about the background to focus button. The point of this is that for those that are maybe less accustomed to manual control of
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their cameras, pushing that is going to cause the camera to open up the aperture on the
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lens that's attached to its largest maximum aperture. So it's going to defocus the background, but to the extent that the lens is capable of
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Don't think that this is actually going to magically defocus backgrounds. It's not even using software to defocus the background
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It is simply opening the lens up to the maximum possible aperture. Now, if you have one of Sony's lenses that has an aperture ring attached, and you're
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actually in the manual aperture control, this button, just know that this button is not going to work because it's being overridden
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Whatever signal it would send to the lens is being overwritten by the actual lens itself
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And so you need to have that lens in the A or automatic mode for that button to work
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And if you try to do it otherwise, this is the error message that you're going to get
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on screen. Because I'm very comfortable with direct control, obviously, I don't find that button particularly
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useful, but it's also the C1 button, which means that it can be customized to whatever
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function you deem to be more useful. So that works for me
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On the top, we also have this three capsule microphone that is unique to these ZV cameras
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And it's much more advanced than what your typical on-camera microphone is
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There's three different microphones that are designed to pick up sound from different angles
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kind of pointed at different angles. And so you can choose between an auto mode that tries to select the right mode
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You can choose front, which, you know, if you're doing vlogging, for example, like this
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this is going to be the proper mode for that. Now in this particular scene, I have set the microphone priority to capturing the front-based audio
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So it's going to not be focusing on getting anything from the rear since I want to record
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from the front in this vlogging situation. There's also a rear mode. So if you're standing behind the camera and you're wanting to get your voice and not what's
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going on in front, that's going to be the appropriate mode for that. Here's a look at the scene, but also the sound that comes when I set up the microphone to
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be directed towards the rear, hearing my voice. And then there's also an all directions mode, which just tries to pick up a 360 degree sound
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I think it's a little bit less effective in my opinion, but here's a couple of different
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sequences where I test out the different modes out in the real world
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Here's a look at the scene, but also the sound that comes when I set up the microphone
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to be directed towards the rear, hearing my voice. Here's the same scene set up where if I am using the all directions microphone instead
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Here's another vlogging type sequence because I know you all love the camera angle where
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you can see right up my nose. Now in this sequence, I have set the microphone audio to auto and so it should hopefully intelligently
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detect what kind of audio that we're looking for in this particular situation and focus
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it towards the front where it can pick up the sound of my voice over any kind of environmental
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audio noise. Okay, here's the exact same sequence, except for this time I have set the microphone to
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all directions. Let's see if the audio sounds any different here. So one thing you can say is that obviously makes a real difference
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This is more than just a gimmick, it definitely makes a difference. The other thing to further enhance audio capabilities is the fact that the hot shoe here is actually
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Sony's multi-interface shoe, which means that with the appropriate mics you can put
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them into that hot shoe and you can actually record digital audio through those microphones
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So again, further enhancing your capabilities. Now I've noted that most of the control scheme here is similar, but there's another really
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significant and very important change here. Previously, the actual memory card slot was in the battery door on the bottom of the camera
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which qualifies as my least favorite spot. Sony has moved that up to a side point here to where right in between the ports on the
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left side of the camera, there is now that single UHS-II compatible SD card slot
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So it meant a slight reorganization of the ports. The same stuff is here, USB-C, microphone input, headphone monitoring jack, and then
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a micro HDMI output. Those are all here and present, just slightly reorganized there on the side
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The fully articulating three inch touchscreen has a very, very slight resolution bump
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It is up from 920,000 dots to 1.036 million dots. And so just a little bit higher resolution
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I find that Sony has gotten much better in its touchscreen capabilities and now menu
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navigation, you have full menu navigation even by touch. So again, appreciated there
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Now this camera by design does not have a viewfinder. That may be fine if your priority is just pure video capture
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I do find, because I still like to take photos, I'm a photographer first, that I really miss
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a viewfinder, particularly when I'm out in bright light conditions. It can be sometimes quite difficult to see a screen
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And then if you're trying to track action and see the screen, it becomes more difficult altogether
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And so I really do miss the viewfinder. That's just something you're going to have to deal with
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It is part of the design. Now the kit lens that you can choose to have the camera bundled with is an updated version
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of the previous generation lens. This also is a Mark II lens. So this is the PowerZoom 16 to 50 millimeter F3.5 to 5.6 OSS Mark II lens
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So it is the same lens optically. And so it's, you know, it's not bad
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It's kit lens-ish. And so it has strengths and weaknesses. But the main thing that's been upgraded here is that it does have better OSS, better stabilization
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and it also has better autofocus to keep up with ever-evolving, you know, faster capture rates
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And so it's now compatible up to 120 frames with, you know, full autofocus during that
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whole time. So obviously some important improvements there. And frankly, I found that the lens works just fine
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It's very small, very light. If you want to travel small and light, this is a great package for doing that
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And the other main ingredient that it's bringing to the table that's lacking in the camera
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is that OSS. The camera does not have in-body image stabilization. And so that means that having a lens with stabilization, particularly for video capture
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is going to be important. You do have the option of using a digital IS image stabilization for video capture
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but it does come with a fairly significant 1.33 times crop factor
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And so better to have stabilization for some other means most of the time, I would say
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And so that's certainly worth it. And the truth of the matter is that while the lens retails individually for $300 in
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this kit, Sony sells it for just $100 in addition. I would say it's probably $100 well spent, even if you don't use it all that often
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A small compact lens like this, particularly for video capture, I think is going to be
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probably useful at times. So probably worth doing it. Autofocus is another area of significant improvement here
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We have gone from the older 425 phase detect points over a contrast AF system, backing
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it up that hybrid system that was seen originally, I believe, in the a6400
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We have moved up to the more advanced autofocus system of the a6700
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That's 759 phase detect points along with more contrast AF behind it, making this a
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much improved autofocus system. Further improved by being backed up by the BionZ XR processor that is going to help to
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move information down the pipeline for a variety of things much more quickly
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Now what we don't have relative to the a6700 is a dedicated AI processor
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I've actually seen that reported a variety of ways. And so some sources saying that it has it, some saying it doesn't
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But in my research from Sony themselves, I don't believe that it does have that
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And I think that's pretty evident from the fact that while you do have full-time IAF
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it's limited to just three trackable subjects, human, animal, and bird, as opposed to the
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wider variety of subjects that are there when you have a dedicated AI engine that is working
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What I did find, however, is that it could track action just fine, and I was able to
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get good shots with things on the move. I found very excellent autofocus accuracy throughout my review
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I was able to hand this lens with a 85mm lens, which by the time you do the crop factor
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you're getting up near 130mm. So narrow depth of field, put it in the hands of a stranger on a hike to take a picture
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of myself and our group, and throughout the series of shots, they were all perfectly focused
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IAF is doing its job, and so that's important. I also found in a pretty complicated situation, I saw a snake in the undergrowth there, and
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so I wanted to take a picture. I shot at f1.4. I was able to get accurately focused results in that very difficult, a lot of extra things
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for autofocus to get stuck on. It nailed the eye where it needed to, and so I really appreciated that
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Another interesting decision here is that Sony has moved away from having a hybrid of
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a mechanical and electronic shutter to a purely electronic shutter. Often what we see on higher-end cameras, though there are a little bit more limitations imposed here
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I will say that since this is not a stacked sensor, it tells me that they are fairly confident
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that that processor is moving information quickly enough to reduce rolling shutter and
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things like that. So what we have here as a benefit is that you have an improved top shutter speed at
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1.8 thousandth of a second rather than 1.4 thousandth of a second on the original ZV-E10
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What is a downgrade, however, is that if you want to use a lit camera like this in the
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studio and you happen to want to do flash syncing, this is not your camera
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With this purely electronic shutter and it not having kind of the robust reinforcement
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you'll see on the higher-end cameras, what you end up with here is a flash sync speed
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of only 1.3 thousandth of a second, which is not useful at all. So not a strength for this camera, certainly don't buy it for that
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Now relative to the original ZV-E10, we do have upgraded buffer depth here
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Again, I think probably because of that processor being able to boot the information along more quickly
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And so, just know, however, if you want to get into fairly deep buffers, you need to
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choose the smaller formats. JPEGs, for example, you can shoot extra fine JPEGs, you can get 143, which is very useful
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You bump that down just to the fine JPEG setting, you can get over a thousand
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That's obviously incredibly useful. With uncompressed RAWs, you can get as many as 59
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So that again is a significant improvement and 59 is enough to be useful
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Definitely very good for this level of camera. Now for me, because I now have the option of shooting lossless compressed RAW, which
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is always my go-to format if it's available. And it is now here
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It wasn't before, but it is now in the Mark II version
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But if you're shooting lossless compressed RAWs and then you top that up by shooting
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JPEGs, and I needed to shoot JPEGs too because unfortunately at the moment I can't even process
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those RAW images. ACR or Lightroom won't open them yet. And so there's certain things I can't do yet until I have a chance to evaluate those in
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the future. So I needed JPEGs so I had something to actually show for my work right now
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So shooting that combination drops that buffer depth down to just 17 frames
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Well, you can shoot at 11 frames per second burst, which means that that buffer fills really quick when you're shooting like that
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So I was shooting this sequence of shots of a friend on a rope swing and obviously I did
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not have enough frames to get them all the way through the drop down to the splash
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And so anyway, I do miss that for that regard. But again, it's hard to argue against what we get here because it not only has improved
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over the previous generation, but it is better than a lot of cameras at this particular level
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of price and or competition. Video side of things has seen also huge upgrades here
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The original ZV-E10, it's kind of interesting for a vlogging focused camera, which is the
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way that Sony markets this camera. It really didn't have all that impressive of video specs
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It was limited to just 8-bit video capture internally. It could only shoot up to 4K30, even that with some crop factor
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In this case, we have moved up to 10-bit video capture, so higher end footage
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You can shoot 4K30 with full sensor readout, no crop factor at all
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And you can shoot as high as 4K60 with just a very mild 1.1x crop
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What we do have, rather than pixel binning, we have downsampling here
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So we have full sensor readout and the footage looks great. Up to 120 frames per second in full HD
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If you want to do some slow-mo, serious slow-mo type work. A cool feature for those that aren't accustomed to diving into the menus and selecting the
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option is the fact that in video mode, there's a button right on screen that allows you to
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choose something called CineVlog. And if you click that, it puts you right into S-Cinetone, giving you kind of a picture profile
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that looks very cinematic. It changes the crop to a 2.35 to 1 ratio with the black bar, so kind of a more of a true
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widescreen type look. Frame rate is automatically set at 24 frames per second
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And as you can see here, it gives quite a cinematic look, you know, just at a touch
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So that is useful. If you wanted to dive deeper into the bitrate options, you can get as high as 600 megabits
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per second, much, much higher threshold. So you can just get much more serious footage here
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You also have the ability, obviously, to shoot S-Cinetone. You have the option of shooting S-Log3
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You can get up to 14 stops of dynamic range for that log footage
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So all of that is much more serious here. You have the ability to assign LUTs, even custom LUTs here
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All of that is fantastic. I also found good video AF tracking
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And so those improvements to the autofocus system also apply very importantly here to video
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I found that in sequences when I was doing testing vlog, that it did a perfect job of
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tracking my face and my eye through very mixed lighting. As I was walking along under trees and just that dappled lighting up and down, up and
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down, it did a great job of not getting distracted. One other thing that's available here, again, might be useful for vloggers is a product
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showcase mode. And when you engage that, it is going to prioritize focusing on anything that's placed towards
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the camera, kind of moved out towards the camera. In this case, I was showing off the kit lens there
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You can see that it does a good job of staying, instead of staying focused on me, focusing
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on that product and so that you can showcase that. And it gives that look that a lot of people like, that depth where there's something defocused
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beyond and you're able to really see that product kind of come out towards you
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It also has now received Sony's Focus Breathing Compensation. That does come with a variable crop depending upon how much correction is needed for the lens
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And that is another area where you're going to be able to get better, even better video
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footage in a variety of situations. So this is now a much more serious video camera here
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And obviously that's very appropriate in a vlogging oriented camera. Now as mentioned previously, when it comes to the sensor performance, my grade is somewhat
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incomplete at this point. I have a pretty good idea, having reviewed many sensors from Sony in the past, of what
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I'm going to expect. But because I can only access JPEGs right now, I really can't do as deep a dive as what
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you might typically expect me to do. This is the upgraded APS-C format, 26 megapixels Exmor CMOS sensor that is currently in the
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FX30 video camera and then in the A6700 hybrid camera. This is an improved sensor by every metric
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It's higher resolution. And if I look at, for example, photons to photos, and their look at comparing the original
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ZV-E10 compared to the A6700, that dynamic range in the sensor has increased by nearly
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a half stop, which is very significant at this point. It's near 11 stops in their test
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And for a frame of reference, that is better than any of the other APS-C sensors that is
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in their catalog and they have a lot of sensors there. It's top-notch for APS-C performance
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So that's very useful. It also has a slight improvement when it comes to the low-light ISO performance
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Again, impressive for increasing resolution and then also increasing the ISO performance
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And again, it is very near the top of the class for that
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Native ISO range now is from 100 to 32,000. It's expandable in either direction
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I definitely don't recommend expanding over the top of that 32,000 into 52,800 or higher
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Just not worth it. Don't go there. I find just in shooting JPEGs and not being able to have more finite control with raw
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images, I find that beyond ISO 12,800, there's just too much skin smoothing or too much
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I would just say smoothing in general, to JPEGs. And so I find that shots in color were fine up to 12,800, a little more blocking than
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what I would like, but not bad. But beyond that, like shooting at ISO 32,000, I could tolerate them in monochrome like this
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shot of the guitar. But beyond that, I didn't love it. But outside of that, because I'm mostly evaluating JPEGs, JPEGs do look great
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Good color, good detail, good skin tones. And I've shot in a variety of situations and been really pleased with the images that I've
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been able to bring home despite not being able to shoot, or at least I could shoot the
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raws, I just can't process them in the way that I typically would
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So my conclusion is this. There are a lot of really important key upgrades here that make the Sony ZV-E10 Mark II makes
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much more sense as a vlogging or video camera than the first generation camera did
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We've got much better battery life, much better video options. We've got a better sensor
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We've got better autofocus. We've got a better processor. All of these things are very welcome
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Now, all of that does come at a price. The MSRP for the Mark II has grown by $300 relative to the original ZV-E10
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So obviously that moves it into a different class of camera. In terms of the competition, at $1,000, which is where we're at at this point, $998 US
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that opens up a fair bit of other competitive options for you to choose from
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Here's what I would say as a general observation to help you to make that decision if you are
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kind of looking and evaluating different camera systems and options. Sony cameras, in my experience, are rarely the least expensive camera option when you're
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looking at other brands. But the Sony ecosystem at this point has nearly endless lens choices, typically at much lower
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prices, you know, mixed throughout that, available than what's available on other platforms
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And that's particularly true of platforms like Canon, for example. And so what that means is that while the cameras tend to be a little bit more expensive
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the whole ecosystem tends to be less expensive in the long run
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Now, obviously that only makes sense, that equation only makes sense if you plan to
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experiment with more than one or two lenses. For example, you think you might want to own multiple lenses
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Well, if that's the case, then I think Sony makes a lot of sense because there are so
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many lens options and a lot of great compact lenses that are either full frame or APS-C
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that are available on E-mount that make this, basically gives you endless possibilities
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for what you can do with the camera. But again, that's only going to make sense if you plan to spend more money down the road
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and expand your lens collection. If you're planning on going with just a kit lens, you know, or one or two lenses, then
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you might want to consider other brands and evaluate them head to head. But if you plan to go a little bit deeper, I think Sony is a fantastic platform to choose
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and the ZV-E10 Mark II is a pretty impressive little camera. I miss the viewfinder
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In certain situations, I'm going to miss the Embody image stabilization, but it does a lot of things really well in a very compact package
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I'm Dustin Abbott. If you want more information, you can check out my text review that's linked down below
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There's also an image gallery that is linked there as well, along with some buying links
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As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in