Sony Digital Camera ZV-1 … or is it a ZV-1? (WHL #122)
PSA: If you buy a Sony ZV-1: Make sure it IS a ZV-1!
Sooo…in preparation for a little trip, and because my Sony RX100M2 is getting old (not in terms of specs, but more on the wear-and-tear side of things), I somewhat recently had a look for alternatives, focussed on the portrait video captures that I do in my car while playing Beach Buggy racing.
The RX100 line of cameras isn’t a straight path in terms of more betterer™, it’s more of a twisty road. My M2 for example is a bit of an oddball with a multifunction hotshoe, the newer ones don’t have that anymore. M6 and M7 have different optics with focus (ha!) on zoom, which isn’t needed here and is even detrimental with higher f numbers for everything up close. And the M3 is a somewhat meh jump in terms of everything, but at a steep price increase over buying just another ten year old M2, so that also wasn’t THE camera type for me. So I did in fact run eBay searches for M4 and M5 over a couple of weeks, those typically sell in the 450-650ish € price bracket right now (depending on age, wear, batteries and other accessories of course)
Good thing I asked ChatGPT once more if something else was available – and there is, especially for video stuff: The Sony ZV-1. Typically priced in the 300 to 350€ range, similar (same?) CCD, similar optics, but optimized for videos instead of still photos. It’s advertised as a vlogging camera, that should tell you enough on their market position (and target audience).
Now, there are several variants of that, including a ZV-1F with terrible optics (at least for my applications, YMMV), and there is a ZV-1M2 that’s somewhat new and therefore expensive (still significantly cheaper than RX100s of the same age!). But the ZV-1 with their drawbacks regarding photos sounded perfect.
So I got one. This one, to be precise.
This is what showed up:
And from the other side:
Do you see what’s wrong?
Of course not. The important bit isn’t in the shot, and the actual product photo of the seller was also fake or re-used (selling three identical “oh mimimi my old camera” 300€-ish camera sets IS suspicious!
Now that I know this, the packaging already gave it away because Sony does mark it clearly on SOME spots, but didn’t bother changing on others. After all, why would one change the “ZV-1” script on top of the display when the camera is a…
ZV-1A?
Yup. Seller sells trash that I specifically removed from my eBay search results because it isn’t usable in my application, and is fucking annoying for basically anyone else.
Amazon and other reviews do mention this when one knows what to look out for, but I haven’t seen a PSA reading “DO NOT BUY“. Sounds harsh, but it basically boils down to this. The ZV-1A is, without teardown, basically a ZV-1, with an important bit either missing (boo!) or disabled (SUPER-BOO!!!). And that is the charging circuitry on the USB port.
The lifecycle of the ZV-1 crossed the EU legislation of fucknowswhichnumber, which dictates smaller battery-powered devices must be able to charge from USB-C, and USB-C alone. This has been extended to laptops and other larger devices more recently (those were difficult with 20V 5A on the higher end, but USB-PD 3.1 can go 48V 5A now, that’s basically enough for any workstation class battleship), but like smartwatches and USB gadgety things had to obey it sooner. And that includes digital cameras. Sony, still fancying Micro USB, only has Micro USB in a metric fuckton of their cameras, including the ZV-1. And since they didn’t feel updating it to USB-C and just re-use the charging circuitry, which is totally fine and just needed the correct connector…they kept the Micro USB AND DISABLED CHARGING. Because IF a device can be recharged via USB, it HAS to be USB-C. If it cannot – do whatever you want, it’s just a data port.
And so the arseholes at Sony EOL’d the charging-capable ZV-1, disabled a super important feature, and reintroduced it as the ZV-1A.
Sure, that is also a fuckup on the legislation side of things, but thats how Eurocrats in Brussels work. Sony on the other hand was too lazy to update to USB-C (which would have made it better) and instead disabled charging (which made it much worse). Price stayed the same, of course.
While I would have liked filming my next adventure in 4K and post-process it down to better FHD than I can do right now – that won’t happen. The seller took more than a week to ship, and still hasn’t replied to my eBay return request. So unless I pick one up on my way, my good old RX100M2 has to handle the job. One last time.
As for a super-rough comparison of video quality after processing, here’s three test images:
Existing video from a night capture of the RX100M2, at FHD and 25fps
Night capture with the ZV-1A in FHD video at 50fps:
And night capture with the ZV-1A in 4K video mode in 25fps :
This was mainly aimed at testing moire patterns, as the screen has FHD resolution as well, and pointing a camera from the center of the screen straight onto it will cause interference patterns of both FHD grids. This should be weaker on higher-res source and targets, but only a distinct mismatch (resolution, pointing angle, distance) will get rid of it properly. A camera with a video more somewhere in between FHD and 4K would be perfect, but there seems to be none on the market…
I would say the ZV-1A shows better results of overall sharpness (check the blue line between controls and game screen) but the moire issues are the same. I tried making a better camera, uhmm, monopod sitting in the cup holder of the car, but that one so perfectly aligned the camera to the screen, the pattern was unbearable. So I’m going back to the ol’ Aliexpress magic arm that has a little angle offset and resolves the issue that way… 
