The Sony ZV-1 has managed to get off to an excellent start with huge numbers of people purchasing it for both photography and videography due to the Sony point and shoot camera range having such an excellent reputation. In all fairness to Sony though, the latest Canon G7X III did disappoint and fail to really take off leaving the RX100 VII and the ZV-1 to dominate the entry-level price points. Although the Sony ZV-1 saw huge initial sales when released, it is also seeing constant, steadily increasing residual sales too and we feel that it will soon manage to overtake the RX100 as the go-to camera of choice for entry-level YouTubers who are also interested in photography.
We have lost count of the number of questions that we have seen from the community regarding the Sony ZV-1 since its release and our regular readers will know that we have already answered a bunch of questions about the camera body. For today’s article though, we are going to be taking a more in-depth look at how you are able to improve your Sony ZV-1 night photography. Although the ZV-1 is an excellent camera for vlogging and YouTube, it definitely does seem that there are a large number of people using it for photography too and we see a surprising number of people reaching out about improving their night photography.
Now, it should come as no surprise, a point and shoot camera like the Sony ZV-1 is limited in what it can do when it comes to night photography and a decent mirrorless or DSLR camera with interchangeable lenses will almost always out perform it. That said though, as the saying goes, the best camera is the one that you have with you and the ZV-1 is very small and light and easy to keep with you so we are going to do our best to help our readers.
The tips, tricks, and suggestions below will definitely be able to help improve the image quality of the night photographs that you are able to capture with your Sony ZV-1. That said though, depending on your goals and the type of night photography photograph that you are trying to capture, you may not need to implement all of our suggestions below. That said though, implementing as many of them as possible is highly likley to drastically help to improve the image quality that you are able to capture with your ZV-1 at night.
Consider A Free Night Photography Course
With the Sony ZV-1 being an extremely capable entry level camera, one of the main issues that we see from the people reaching out who are looking to improve the performance of the camera is that they are treating their nighttime photography sessions as if it were a daytime photography session. This is an extremely common problem amongst entry level and even some intermediate level photographers as they have different fundamentals of how you should go about capturing your photograph.
As a reader of Photography Paws, you are able to claim a no obligation two month trial of Skillshare premium and use it to enroll on the best nighttime photography course available. The course has an absolutely outstanding reputation amongst photographers with it also having a ton of excellent reviews from other photographers who have already completed it and also had to pay to do the course. It only takes around an hour to complete but is one of the quickest and easiest ways that you will be able to improve your night photography so it is well worth doing in our opinion.
Invest In A Suitable Tripod
Due to the Sony ZV-1 being more of a videography or YouTube camera, we see a large number of people reaching out for tips and tricks with the camera who use it strictly as a handheld camera. Although this can be fine when it comes to things such as recording a vlog or some other type of YouTube video, it really does fall short when it comes to photography. Thankfully, you are able to purchase a decent, cheap entry level tripod for around the one hundred dollar mark and we always recommend the Zomei z699c as it is one of, if not the best entry level tripods on the market right now.
The z699c keeps on going from strength to strength due to it being able to easily offer you intermediate level performance and functionality with an entry level price tag so it is no surprise that it has quickly built an excellent reputation for itself that just keeps on getting better with each month that passes. The image stabilisation from the tripod really does help to improve the quality of the image that you are able to capture and remove the blue that is common when capturing photographs in low light while holding your camera in your hands.
A tripod is an excellent camera accessory to have in your collection as it can be used in pretty much any photography or videography niche too helping you develop your overall skillset without having any issues. If you don’t already have a tripod, we would highly recommend that you check out the Zomei z699c and consider adding it to your collection of camera accessories.
Consider Getting Some Steel Wool
This one will depend on the specific sub-niche of night photography that you are wanting to get involved in with your Sony ZV-1 and you can come up with some excellent ways to integrate steel wool into how you go about your night photography sessions, especially if you think outside of the box. Due to the Sony ZV-1 being one of, if not the most popular camera for travel vloggers, you will often be in a situation where you will be photographing a landmark that has been photographed thousands of times before. The image above offers an example of how you are able to use steel wool to your advantage in this situation and bring an otherwise boring photograph to life with some steel wool usage.
With the Sony ZV-1 also being popular amongst Instagram influancers, this lets your photograph of the same location that other people have stand out and help draw their eyes to your content. This can help you capture more likes and followers too as much of growing your social media channels is based around getting a potentials subscriber and ensuring that your content is able to stand out against what the competition is offering. One thing that we would like to quickly mention is some locations may restrict the use of steel wool so always have a quick search on Googl prior to using it in a new place.
Take Advantage Of The Landscape
Sticking with the whole travel YouTuber and social media influencer theme, another common mistake or missed opportunity that we see people make is that they will not really think of potential competitions for their night photographs with their Sony ZV-1 that include the local landscape. Although this will depend on the location that you are in, the photograph above offers a solid example of how something as basic as a mountain and some trees are able to add both depth and scale to the moon to help take the photograph competition to the next level.
We have seen some excellent work done in this field by people integrating famous landmarks but there are tons of excellent unique things in new locations that people dismiss. Even something as simple as a stature can be used to this effect and really help to take your night photography up to the next level and ensure that you are capturing photographs that will catch the eye on social media with ease.
Play Around With Your Camera Settings
Although there are some base line settings for the Sony ZV-1 online for optimal night photography, we usually recommend that our readers only ever use them as a base line as they can be pretty bad in all honesty. Each location will have different elements and different lighting meaning that you should be tweaking the settings of your camera for optimal image quality. Although this may sound like a whole bunch of work, even just slightly tweaking your ISO and shutter speed can offer a drastic improvement in the nighttime photography that your Sony ZV-1 is able to capture for you.
Capture Your Photographs In RAW Format
Switching over to saving your photographs in RAW format is becoming more and more popular due to modern SD card storage becoming cheaper so the larger file sizes of RAW photographs has no real draw back. That said though, we do still see some people who use JPEG as their default photograph saving format. In our opinion, this is a mistake and is holding you back when it comes to your nighttime photography image quality due to the compression of JPEG images making your photograph slightly worse to reduce the storage space required for it.
Now only does saving your photographs in RAW format help keep their initial image quality as high as possible, but it also ensures that you have the best possible starting canvas for any post production editing that you wish to do on your photographs too. In this day and age, it is very common for the vast majority of established social media influencers to run some form of post production on their photographs before sharing them so RAW should defiantly be your preferred file format.
Plan Your Night Photography Session
Our final tip for getting the best image quality for your Sony ZV-1 night photography is to actually take a few minutes to Google the local conditions for the photography session and plan what you want and are more importantly able to actually do. It only takes a minute or two to quickly check the weather, cloud cover, phase of the moon, and other stuff like that to make sure that you have good visibility and conditions when you get to the location. We have lost count of the number of people have have fallen short due to them not planning ahead for their photography session only to take the time to hike out to their location to find that they cant see anything and that it is also raining.
