Sony has just announced a new APS-C camera designed for bloggers and content creators that can be used with a huge range of lenses: the ZV-E10.
Dubbed by Sony as a “versatile video creation tool,” this camera is geared towards video creators and vloggers. Borrowing features from the ZV-1, the new camera — containing a 24.2MP Exmor CMOS APS-C sensor and BIONZ X processor — includes a fully articulating screen, a tally light, a high-quality microphone, and the option to add more audio gear via the hot shoe. The camera shoots 4K at 30fps, and offers S-Gamut3.Cine, HLG, S-Log3 and S-Log2.
Sony has included live streaming and webcam functionality, as well as a variety of other features intended to make life easier for content creators, such as a Background Defocus mode and buttons to switch you instantly between frame rates. As you'd expect, the ZV-E10 includes eye and face detection autofocus and touch tracking when shooting video.
The ZV-E10 will be available either in black and white for around $700 body only or $800 with the E PZ 16-50mm OSS kit lens.
Will you be placing an order? Let us know in the comments below.
What do vloggers want more than anything else? Wide-angle lenses with no cropping, great image stabilization, great autofocus. Sony achieved the last one, but once again fumbled terribly on the first two. What they created is a camera perfect for filmmaking: if you have a gimbal or put it on a tripod, shoot 24p 4K, and don't move it much, it's great. But for vlogging? Total failure:
Shoot 30p instead of 24p and it crops.
Shoot 1080 for more reasonable file sizes and it crops and is soft as hell.
Activate digital IS because it has no IBIS and lens IS isn't enough and it crops 45% which is insane.
Still doesn't have great IS with all of that set, and has terrible rolling shutter jello no matter what you do.
The cameras is at its worst when everything is set up for vlogging. It's the exact opposite of what it should be. It's like building a cargo van and trying to tell everyone it's a sports car.
Don't know much about vlogging, but you are wrong on wide angle lens selection. There are multiple wide angle auto focus lenses for e-mount anything from 10mm (15mm 35mm equivalent) and up from multiple manufacturers.
With how much the camera crops in common video shooting scenarios, those 10mm lenses end up being much less wide.
From the reviews I saw, it seems like it only crops in aggressively if you use the active image stabilization? [Edit: I just saw that it crops a bit in 4k and a whole lot in active stab]
That said, sam dasso is right that there are quite a few wide angle options for E-mount now: Sony 10-18 f4, Tamron 11-20 f2.8, Samyang/Rokinon 12mm f2.0 (now available in AutoFocus). We e-mount users have never before had so many good choices for wide-angle.
The 10-18mm would definitely need active stabilization for walk-and-talk vlogging, at which point it's a 14.5-26, which i suppose is still useful, 21.75mm full-frame equivalent... but now you're going from an $800 kit (with the 16-50) to $1600 to get the body and the 10-18. The price DOUBLES just because they couldn't give it good stabilization.
That's true, but I just read that the ZVE10 will have gyro metadata, which means rather than use the active stabilization mode, you could probably get better results in post with Sony's Catalyst software. All this just to admit that [once again] even though there is a glimmer of potential, Sony still disappoints "straight out of the box."
When walking, stabilizing in post, or Electronic Image Stabilization in the body, still leaves a vertical blur in the image with every footstep, while good lens/body OIS/IBIS avoids that completely.
Article over on PetaPixel claims this camera overheats shooting 4k in under 10 minutes, in the shade, while it was only 74℉. Reviewer said he would have returned the camera had he bought it.
My God they've gotten a lot of mileage out of that sensor!
Sensor AND processor, which is why I think the menu system [that every reviewer hates] continues to live on in these APSC cameras.
That W-battery, though. It was fine for me back in the day since I only did stills and I shot with 2 bodies so I almost never needed to replace in the middle of a shoot. But, for video work....?
True, it eats batteries when recording in 4k, but 3rd party batteries and chargers are cheap and abundant, I really don't know why everyone craps on the batteries if they are an understandable compromise for cost and smaller packaging.
3rd party batteries often fake the thermal sensor, so they can easily overheat and swell during charging. That can be mildly inconvenient (your 3rd party battery won't work anymore) to extremely inconvenient (your camera supports in-camera charging, it swells inside the camera and gets stuck inside, possible damaging or destroying it) to utterly disastrous (it explodes during charging and starts a fire.)