Xperia 1 II - Could be The Perfect Phone for Photographers By Kai W

This video is sponsored by Squarespace, the place to go to if you wanna set up your own slick looking website or online store. You know in a variety of ways and different levels of obviousness, Sony has been keeping me entertained throughout the lockdown, or a rainy day like this when I just can't be asked to go out. Whether it be making work for idle hands, setting one's pulse racing, not necessarily in a good way. Then you've got Sony Music and Sony Pictures and then this thing. This could be the all-encompassing device that does all of that. It's great for sound because, Jack! Jack! Jack! We missed you, Jack! It delivers on the visuals, too.

Yes, so it's got 21 by 9 CinemaWide TM 6.5 inch 4K HDR OLED display, and it looks pretty fantastic. I can't even do this screen justice.8-bit display with 2-bits moving for 10-bit equiv, it's incredibly sumptuous. And then you can use it for remote play on the old PlayStation, you can connect it to your DualShock but I don't have that little phone holder thing for it. And certainly dropping it might become an issue, it's slipped out of my trouser a couple of times - trouser pockets when sitting down because it is a slippery, it's an eel covered in jelly. And I don't mean I've tried putting a jelly covered eel in my pocket, just saying.

Yeah Well, maybe I'm not one to judge as I drop everything, might help that both sides are Gorilla Glass, though. But let's quickly come to the bit that matters the most, at least on this channel. Previously I looked at the Xperia 1, which could be now referred to as the 1 Mark I, I guess. And I liked it mostly, mostly for the Cinema Pro app and that Venice look, which is fabulous. But Mark II is not just gone for the video geek appeal, but also the photo geek appeal.

The Photo Pro app is like an alpha camera, has the right look and feel. It just feels so familiar if you're a Sony shooter, apart from that menu system. This one is much easier to navigate. In all fairness it's a simpler menu system which is fine, because it lets you be in control more than you really need for a phone camera app. The ability to change shutter speed, exposure mode, and pretty much everything you might want to change is there, but really the best additions are 20 fps which brings the same insane burst rate from an a9 II, without the same buffer of course.

But also you get face and eye detection, you switch to face detection by going to this menu right here. And then the eye detection. Let me try and work this out, okay. Do it backwards now. That's a lot of eye action.

Er... let me try. Yeah, there we are, AF on. Once you press AF on. Here we go.

That's eye detection. Now that works not just with humans, but animals too. Your pets. It works mostly quite well, accurate even with sleepy eyes, apart from when it falls and ear wasn't high. The autofocus is really good too, mostly likely to do with a Dual Photo Diode sensor, whatever they call it, where it has two photo diode light sensors for each pixel, or the catchy name 3D indirect Time-of-Flight sensor, which shoots out an infrared beam from the sensor.

It's not like a laser as shown in the official pics. It's invisible. Although it would be cool if it shot out some laser beams, to calculate how far your subject away is from the sensor, to focusing how to do to focusing accurately and speedily. And I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this technology in the future, even though it's not exactly something that just rolls off the tongue. I did a little unscientific test of me practicing some Crapoeira, and that little Eye AF green square tracks onto my eye, sticky like treacle.

There was a much higher hit rate than with the iPhone. Otherwise, what else? Well, lens placement is better. Here it is. On the corner here. On the previous version, it's right slap-bang down in the middle here, which is nice if you like symmetry, but when you're holding it with your right hand index finger on the shutter button, your left hand is probably gonna cover the lenses.

There. On the new one, you can pretty much get away with not covering lenses. And that is something that bugs me about the iPhone is that if you want to use the volume button as a shutter button, you're probably going to cover up the lenses with you right hand, unless you hold it unlike any normal person in world. The Xperia 1 mark II with the lighting optimizer doesn't provide as much dynamic ranges to iPhone smart HDR. But the auto HD on the Sony does provide a bit more dynamic range, in terms of centre sharpness on the standard lens, they're very close.

It's only in the corners where the Sony shows a little bit of softness. Low-light is also very similar. Well, that's the stills. What about the moving stuff? The Xperia 1 Mark I has a rather rudimentary manual focusing slide, if I can get my finger on it. There you go.

It works, but the trouble is there's no focus peaking to confirm focus or not. The mark II takes the video geek up to another level, you can set markers for focus pull. That's brilliant. And the speed at which it pulls focus to, then once you set the markers, you simply press a or b to pull focus. Fantastic! But still no peaking! Aah! Then they've added some auto features, auto shutter which i think is useful.

I get not having auto to make it more like a cine camera, but it's a phone! It's fiddly when you've got a slippery phone, and you have to change the shutter setting which is right on the edge of the phone, so you have to almost completely move your right hand from holding your phone, just to change the shutter setting, therefore risking dropping it again. Then you've got auto ISO also. Yeah, yeah, that's nice but the big thing is 4K 60. Well, technically 59.94 FPS. You've also got 25 FPS but no 50 FPS.

But look, the video you get from it looks superb. I took it out to film some skating with the 4k 60, which is not only perfect for action, but makes getting daytime footage easier. There we are. A bit of Sony Xperia 1 mark II. They liked the one, so they just call it mark II.

Does it make sense? No. Confusing. And then the next one will be 1 2 3. There's no ND filter obviously and there's no easy way of adding one, so realistically getting that golden 180 degree shutter is not possible in daylight. With the aperture stuck on wide open, shooting at 60 FPS at least makes it almost possible in broad daylight.

Almost. I just stuck it on auto. If I have to be critical, I'd say the 4K 60 isn't that sharp but love the dynamic range, ripe for a bit of lutifying. Now the only consequence of shooting at 4K 60 is that you have no choice but to use a 24mm lens. It doesn't allow you to choose another focal length in 4K 60.59.94. You just have to keep reminding yourself "It's a phone.

" I'd be happy with this kind of video from cameras with bigger sensors. Having a different looks is great although I find myself still preferring the Venice CS look, just cuz it's the Venice look, and that is proper badass. Whoops. No. Stop.

I'm already on the YouTubes over there. Anything else to complain about? Well, once you choose your project you can't change frame rates unless you start a new project. But I guess you just have to treat it like having to go through the Sony menu on your alpha camera to change frame rates. Same kind of fiddliness. What else? Um, the record button sound.

I don't know why they made the sound of the start and the stop exactly the same. It's confusing when you're used to Sony cameras having a different sound for start and stop. What's worse is that sometimes you have to check the colour of the timecode just to see if you're recording. Because it can be hard on first glance, that's an email, to see if you're recording or not. Start.

Stop. It would be better if they just had a voice saying start and stop. Oh, and also there's no way of judging exposure correctly. Otherwise I love it. It's not the best thing since sliced bread.

It's french toast, with bacon and syrup on top. The video is delicious. It's not phone-like. It's pretty formidable in good light. I would happily use it for B rolls.

The focus is decent. Low light, reminds you it's coming from a phone. Stabilisation sometimes seems a bit overdone, but you can still get some smooth handheld shots with the Xperia 1 Mark II. You know, I think Sony is onto something, most likely, world domination. It's still going to be hard to tempt hardcore Apple users away but the Xperia offers up a lot for photographers and filmmakers, but it's not even just about that.

The thing with Sony is that they have the whole ecosystem. You can look at another brand, they have cine cameras, and consumer cameras, but there's no other brand that comes close to having it all. Panasonic maybe, they do TVs. But Sony has cine cameras, a load of different consumer cameras, from full-frame to compact, to action cameras, and then you've got Playstation and phones that do the photos and video well. If you want to film with the same look, it makes a whole load of sense to just get everything from the same brand.

They've also got an Xperia Pro coming out, and that has an HDMI IN on it. If you're Sony shooter in the video they're just gonna kill off any need to buy an external monitor from a different brand, cause your phone is with you. And the external monitor is just another clunky device you wish you didn't have to bring with you. And maybe if they tie in the gaming with cameras and filming, well, Sony could become a huge part of one's tech life, not just a lockdown or rainy day. Okay, as we're coming to an end, I want to talk about Squarespace.

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Super easy to do. Thanks for watching. See you again. And that has an HDI. And that has an HDMI.

And that has an HDMI. And that has an HDMI IN on it. And that has an HDMI IN on it. Why is this so fucking hard to say? And that has an HDMI in on it. And that has an HD I'm... Ahh for fuck's sake.

and that has got an HDMI IN on it. Amaz... and that has an HDMI in on it.

Source : Kai W