The clicks grew fewer with passing days, Moments now caught in fleeting ways. A phone in hand, sharp and bright, Yet lacking the soul, the depth, the light. I scrolled through years in a digital stream, Faces, places, once part of a dream. With each image, a quiet spark, A whisper calling from the dark. So I gathered my past, gave it a name, On private shelves I built my flame. And as the faces surfaced anew, The urge returned, fresh, yet true. I searched for a way to keep it near, A tool, a companion, something clear. Not for the tech, the specs, or fame, But to fall in love again with the frame.

ZV-1 Photo of the Sony ZV-1 by a Canon 5D Mark II at 105mm ƒ/4, 1/125 ISO 100. Lens: Canon EF 24-105mm ƒ/4 L IS Mark I. Focus bracket of 3 photos.

I had been taking fewer photographs for years, and more of the ones I did take were from a phone. The phone is excellent. I will give it that. Something was still missing every time I looked back: the urge to play with the image, not only to capture it.

Why I bought one

Quite recently I consolidated my archive onto an Immich server. It is a private Google Photos kind of thing, with face recognition and tagging kept at home. Scrolling my own history there is what pushed the urge back into action.

I needed a real pocket camera. I went to my local store and looked around. I have been a Canon person for years, but I wanted something simple enough to carry without deciding to. In the end I bought a second-hand Sony ZV-1.

It is not a full-frame body. It does not pretend to be. What it offers is a 20.1 megapixel 1-inch sensor, a Zeiss 24-70mm f/1.8-2.8, real-time eye autofocus, and 4K video in a package that fits a pocket. That last part is the one that matters. A camera you have with you is a camera you will use.

Pocket-Friendly Taken with Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra at ƒ/1.8 1/50s 5.4mm ISO 640

Making the colours mine

The first files were too contrasty, and the colour rendition was not Canon’s. That is not a failure of the camera. It is a different default.

I adapted. After tweaking the picture profiles and dialling the contrast down, the images started to match what I wanted.

ZV-1 Picture Profile 10 Taken with Canon 5D Mark II at 50mm ƒ/3.5, 1/16 ISO 200. Lens: Canon EF 50mm ƒ/1.4 USM

The setup I landed on:

Camera Menu 1 → Page 8 → Picture Profiles → PP10

Black Level: -12
Gamma: Cine2
Black Gamma: Middle
Knee: Manual
Color Mode: S-Gamut
Everything else: default

Video is decent as well. It handles 4K without fuss and can shoot S-Log profiles. I am not especially good at that yet. I like having the option.

What it actually changed

The ZV-1 is not a DSLR with all the magic bells. It is the camera I can take wherever I go, which means I take photographs again on ordinary days. That is enough.

This note is only about the pocket camera. The longer arc, from the Olympus in Tokyo to the 5D Mark II that never quite left, belongs in a separate piece.


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