Which camera is better for bloggers: Nikon Z30 vs Sony ZV-E10 | Articles | Photo, video, optics

New from Nikon did not receive a viewfind­er. Pho­to: frendroid.com

Smart­phone or full cam­era? Any blog­ger at least once thought about how to get a good pic­ture and not go broke. Today, the giants of the pho­to indus­try reg­u­lar­ly release spe­cial mod­els aimed at blog­gers. Among the lat­ter are Nikon Z30 and Sony ZV-E10. Is it worth it to spend mon­ey on a “blog­ger” cam­era and which of the two is bet­ter? Now let’s fig­ure it out.

Nikon Z30 is a new cam­era spe­cial­ly designed for blog­gers and con­tent mak­ers. It is sim­i­lar to the Sony ZV-E10, which has the same goals. Read more about the ZV-E10 in our review.

Both cam­eras are com­pact and fair­ly bud­get hybrid mod­els with inter­change­able lens­es. They are suit­able for shoot­ing blogs of any genre, as well as for a wider range of pho­to and video tasks.

How Nikon Z30 and Sony ZV-E10 are similar: key points

The swiv­el screen is a must-have for a blog­ger. Pho­to: blog.fotografium.com

Both the Nikon Z30 and the Sony ZV-E10 are equipped with an APS‑C sen­sor (small­er than a full frame, but bet­ter in low light than cam­eras and smart­phones), a swiv­el rear dis­play (handy for shoot­ing self­ie videos), and good built-in micro­phones for con­ve­nient sound record­ing with­out addi­tion­al devices.

Both mod­els do not have a viewfind­er. This imme­di­ate­ly hints that the mod­els are not too focused on pho­tog­ra­phy, because fram­ing a pho­to through the viewfind­er is much more con­ve­nient, but for video this is not such a fun­da­men­tal point. There is also no built-in sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem.

As befits cam­corders, there is a light on the front that lights up when record­ing starts. So when shoot­ing a self­ie blog, you will not for­get to press the “Rec” but­ton.

What is the difference between Nikon Z30 and Sony ZV-E10: key points

There are not many obvi­ous dif­fer­ences:

- Sony has a “more cheer­ful” bat­tery — 440 ver­sus 330 pho­tos on a sin­gle charge (about endurance in video mode below).

- Nikon has two con­trol dials — one at the back, the oth­er at the front, which again is con­ve­nient for self­ie shoot­ing, while Sony has both dials locat­ed at the back.

- both cam­eras have con­nec­tors for con­nect­ing an exter­nal micro­phone, but only Sony received a head­phone jack. A strange deci­sion from Nikon, because blog­gers need to check the vol­ume of the record­ed sound.

And now let’s move on to the most impor­tant thing — to the video.

Video filming

The result of the video, at first glance, looks the same, but there is still a dif­fer­ence. Both shoot in UHD 4K at frame rates up to 30p and slow motion in Full HD at up to 120p. How­ev­er, at the same time, Sony at 30 frames per sec­ond shoots with 1.23x crop (frame crop­ping), and at 120p — with 1.14x, while Nikon does not have any crop­ping.

In 4K you get more res­o­lu­tion and detail, in Full HD (1080p) you get less. As for the frame rate, the high­er it is, the bet­ter suit­ed for scenes with fast move­ment, as well as for slow motion (the effect of “slow motion”) clips.

The dif­fer­ence is also notice­able in the rolling shut­ter effect. This is a visu­al dis­tor­tion that appears dur­ing video record­ing, when pan­ning or mov­ing the cam­era dur­ing shoot­ing. The sever­i­ty of the effect can be approx­i­mate­ly esti­mat­ed by the speed of read­ing the matrix dur­ing shoot­ing in the elec­tron­ic shut­ter mode. The indi­ca­tor is cal­cu­lat­ed in mil­lisec­onds and char­ac­ter­izes the min­i­mum shut­ter speed at which the effect of rolling shut­ter will not be notice­able.

So, the Z30 at a frame rate of 30p and 24p has a read­out speed of about 20 ms — not too good, but not too bad (that is, the rolling shut­ter effect will appear, but not crit­i­cal). Things are worse with the ZV-E10: if 27ms in cropped mode at 30p can still be sur­vived, then at 24p the speed drops to 33ms: at this speed, even slight pan­ning dur­ing record­ing can cause notice­able neg­a­tive effects.

In terms of video record­ing time, the Z30 can record 4K video for around 35 min­utes, accord­ing to Nikon, and 1080p video for 125 min­utes. The lim­i­ta­tions here are not relat­ed to the bat­tery, but to the over­heat­ing of the cam­era. Sony claims 30 min­utes for 4K and 60 min­utes for 1080p. Small­er, but in real con­di­tions, this is usu­al­ly enough to shoot a video.

And if the video record­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of the cam­eras are sim­i­lar, then the pic­ture is dif­fer­ent.

Sony offers the same “Pic­ture Pro­file” sys­tem found in its pro­fes­sion­al cam­corders. For exam­ple, like the Sony FX3. This means you can shoot in log-mode and with a wide col­or gamut, which allows you to “play” with col­or cor­rec­tion in video edi­tors. By the way, the mid-bud­get a6400 has the same set of col­or pro­files as the ZV-E10.

Nikon has only a spe­cial “flat” (Flat) col­or pro­file. It is not as flex­i­ble in terms of post-pro­cess­ing as Log pro­files, how­ev­er, it allows you to get a wider dynam­ic range. This is great for record­ing movies in high-con­trast light­ing (such as in bright sun­light). Plus “flat” pro­file — ease of use. It is more con­ve­nient to “paint” such mate­r­i­al than a video shot in log mode on Sony.

Sound recording

Sony has a wind­screen for the micro­phone. Pho­to: newsshooter.com

Both mod­els received decent built-in stereo micro­phones on the top of the case. There are no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in sound qual­i­ty between them. Sony comes with a wind­screen, for Nikon it will have to be pur­chased for $ 10. How­ev­er, the Nikon ver­sion is equipped with a “cold shoe” (the most com­mon mount for pho­to and video acces­sories), thanks to which, when installing a wind­screen, you do not lose the “shoe” on the cam­era itself, and you can put the desired acces­so­ry on top, for exam­ple, a small LED illu­mi­na­tor.

At the same time, we recall that the Sony ZV-E10 has one notice­able advan­tage for sound record­ing — a head­phone jack. You can imme­di­ate­ly check the sound vol­ume, track extra­ne­ous noise. This will pre­vent the typ­i­cal prob­lems of blog­gers. For exam­ple, when in the final video the sound is too qui­et, and there is no way to reshoot the video.

Autofocus

An impor­tant aspect for blog­gers, and here the cam­eras are notice­ably dif­fer­ent. For pho­tog­ra­phy, the sys­tem from Sony is more suit­able. Track­ing objects on the ZV-E10 is eas­i­er and faster. At the same time, the cam­era auto­mat­i­cal­ly lingers on faces in any mode, which allows you to observe a mov­ing object and not lose aut­o­fo­cus on your eyes. Nikon has a spe­cial mode for this.

This dif­fer­ence becomes even more notice­able dur­ing video shoot­ing. Nikon focus­es tena­cious­ly on faces, which is great for shoot­ing a self­ie blog, but when track­ing oth­er objects, aut­o­fo­cus peri­od­i­cal­ly miss­es. The Sony sys­tem works more reli­ably if you choose the sub­ject to focus on.

Photography

Not the most impor­tant aspect for vlog­gers, but the abil­i­ty to take pic­tures with a video cam­era is a big plus for those who, apart from YouTube and Twitch, have a pho­to­blog. An impor­tant bonus for trav­el blog­gers who do not want to car­ry a sep­a­rate cam­era for pho­tog­ra­phy.

Sam­ple pho­to tak­en with Nikon Z30. Pho­to: Nikon/popphoto.com

Both mod­els use time-test­ed sen­sors that do an excel­lent job with pho­tog­ra­phy. Crop APS‑C sen­sors help to take high-qual­i­ty detailed shots and are not afraid of poor light­ing.

An inter­est­ing fact: the qual­i­ty of pic­tures tak­en on the ZV-E10 and Z30 will be almost the same as that of a pho­to tak­en on a top-end mod­ern smart­phone. It’s all about com­pu­ta­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy algo­rithms. If you shoot in low light on the 12th and 13th gen­er­a­tion iPhone, it will quick­ly take and glue sev­er­al frames in a row to com­pen­sate for the short­com­ings of the small sen­sor. As a result, we get an opti­mal image, sim­i­lar to a pho­to from a tra­di­tion­al cam­era. That is why many blog­gers pre­fer to shoot con­tent on a mobile phone.

Read also:

What cam­eras does the iPhone 13 have: aper­ture, matrix, chips

Sam­sung Galaxy S22: cam­era specs and sam­ple pho­tos

Sam­ple pho­to tak­en with Sony ZV-E10. Pho­to: Sony.net

How­ev­er, the “large” cam­eras have an ace up their sleeve. You can use lens­es with them and get a lot of effects. Of course, smart­phones can sim­u­late, for exam­ple, blur­ring the back­ground. But they still occa­sion­al­ly make mis­takes, blur­ring small details that should stay in focus.

As for the dif­fer­ences between the two mod­els, there is not much dif­fer­ence in detail between Nikon’s 21 megapix­els and Sony’s 24 megapix­els.

And a lit­tle more about lens­es. Both cam­eras are avail­able with a kit 16–50mm zoom lens. The Sony ver­sion is a pow­er zoom that allows you to zoom smooth­ly using the but­ton on the option­al self­ie stick. How­ev­er, in terms of pho­tog­ra­phy, Nikon offers a bet­ter “glass”.

If you intend to buy anoth­er lens for your cam­era, Sony has a much rich­er choice.

Lens­es for every taste and bud­get are the advan­tage of Sony. Pho­to: bhphotovideo.com

The cam­era from Sony uses an E‑mount, for which many native and third-par­ty optics are avail­able. You’ll eas­i­ly find wide-angle vlog­ging options that make up for crop­ping and the lack of built-in sta­bi­liza­tion.

But the cam­era from Nikon is equipped with a “younger” Z mount, for which there are not too many options on the mar­ket. In addi­tion, lens­es from third-par­ty man­u­fac­tur­ers are not com­pat­i­ble with Nikon’s aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem, so you have to turn to expen­sive “native” glass­es. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use lens­es from Nikon DSLRs through the FTZ adapter, but the speed and reli­a­bil­i­ty of aut­o­fo­cus will suf­fer.

Nikon Z30 and Sony ZV-E10: which camera to choose

The choice between Sony and Nikon is a mat­ter of taste. Pho­to: popphoto.com

Sony ZV-E10 and Nikon Z30 are in many ways very sim­i­lar mod­els, and it is not easy to pick a favorite among them.

If your con­tent is not lim­it­ed to vlog­ging and you often take pho­tos, we advise you to pay atten­tion to Nikon. The Z30’s whale zoom lens is much bet­ter suit­ed for still pho­tog­ra­phy, and the cam­era boasts con­ve­nient front and rear con­trol dials. She also has a sys­tem for instant­ly trans­fer­ring pho­tos from the cam­era to a smart­phone, which is con­ve­nient for quick­ly post­ing pic­tures on a social net­work. In terms of video, the Z30 boasts that it shoots 4K / 30p from the entire width of the sen­sor, while Sony crops the frame in this mode.

On the oth­er hand, Sony has a longer last­ing bat­tery, a head­phone jack, and a wider range of lens­es to suit every bud­get. A sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage is the pro­nounced rolling shut­ter effect dur­ing video shoot­ing. How­ev­er, the ZV-E10 has reli­able and con­ve­nient aut­o­fo­cus, which is evi­dent in both stills and video.

As a result, the choice between Sony ZV-E10 and Nikon Z30 is a mat­ter of taste, goals and brand com­mit­ment.

*in prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from the resource dpreview.com (Richard But­ler) were used.