My Favourite Compact Travel Cameras of 2022 | Sony A7C, ZV1, Xperia Pro-I
If I hadn’t spent the last decade or so with a camera somewhere on my person, I would barely have gained any awards or distinctions for my photography work. The value of the images I’ve gathered on even the most ordinary of outings is extraordinary. Personal photography has brought with it a raft of medals as well as my last Fellowship distinction. It’s little wonder I’m always going on about travel cameras! I thought I’d use this post to offer an update on the equipment I now carry whenever I leave the house. There’s always something to see and photograph, even if you sometimes have to look for it.
An everyday personal use camera doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it just needs to suit your purposes. Over the years I’ve worked my way through a number of handbag cameras and as time has gone on new technology has gradually met more of my requirements, with fewer compromises. I now have three compact travel cameras which are used interchangeably, each with their own features and benefits.
Finding the Best Compact Travel Camera for my Needs
I truly discovered travel and street photography when I purchased a Fuji X10 in 2011 - a camera which kindled my love of recreational photography. In fact I have never enjoyed off-duty photography as much as I did back then. I still own this camera, there’s something special about it. Or at least there was given the era when it was released. It was the beginning of a new breed of compact cameras, but with a super stylish retro design, a fast zoom lens and a 2/3” sensor.
Now imagine a system with a decent sized sensor and features not dissimilar to a well specified DSLR, but in a small and lightweight body. When Olympus released the pro-oriented 16MP OMD E-M5 in 2012 this replaced my DSLR inventory and became my professional system (whilst being small and light enough to use as a recreational camera). It was incredible not to have to haul a DSLR and lens around with me on personal outings. I could also avoid the horribly suspicious looks which were part and parcel of most photo walks. There were some compromises of course – the u4/3 kit lenses which offer the lightweight and compact size inherent to a travel system have variable apertures and combined with the 4/3 sensor this meant shallow depth of field (and low ISO values) was compromised. Still, that was a small price to pay for the size and weight reduction, and overall image quality.
Over time I started hankering for something even smaller and lighter, which could be slipped into a pocket. I went on to own two iterations of the Sony RX100 line, but lasted only a short time with each. I’ve never warmed to the RX100 cameras, which feel like a bar of soap in my hands as well as having controls which I find cramped, fiddly, and frustrating to use. On both of the units I owned the lens wasn’t particularly sharp either, especially at the edges. I then moved on to a Canon G5X which I preferred, before giving way to the Olympus EM-10 (the lightest u4/3 camera at the time).
At this point in travel camera evolution, we were limited to 4/3 sensors or smaller (at least if we wanted zoom lens capability – there were a couple of APS-C contenders, but with a fixed prime lens and a limited feature set). We’d be tied to variable aperture zoom lenses in order to keep the overall package as small and light as possible. This is usually where the gripes and complaints would always lie - the lack of creative control and the need to use higher than desired ISO values to compensate for those smaller aperture values.
The release of the Panasonic LX100 in 2014 was exciting - a proper compact camera with a 4/3 sensor and a fast zoom lens – finally! I was very fond of this camera and it was a joy to use, but I would have liked a little more than 12 megapixels. That requirement was answered by the LX100ii in 2018, albeit with a lens which didn’t match the edge-to-edge sharpness of its predecessor. Having tried two or three copies of this camera I found that I was having to crop the images more than I would have liked in order to remove the soft corners and edges. Given that my compact camera must have a purpose (providing images good enough for high-level professional competitions) I thought I was compromising more than I wanted to. And so the search continued for something small enough and light enough to improve my shooting envelope.
My next travel camera was the Fuji XT200 which I bought in 2020 - with its beautiful APS-C Bayer sensor and nice quality compact kit lens. This is a great little camera and very lightweight. But it wasn’t a particularly sensible purchase given I’m not otherwise a Fuji user. I couldn’t justify buying additional lenses for a system which was still lacking in some areas. I reluctantly parted with my XT200 not long after I added the stunning full frame Sony A7C to my professional kit bag in 2021. I shoot with Sony professionally so the A7C was a much better prospect as a double duty second camera and recreational camera. The kit lens which accompanies the A7C is exceptional – it’s very compact, ultra sharp and makes for a dream travel solution.
You would think I would have left things there, but I was browsing YouTube one day and saw a number of rave reviews about the little Sony ZV-1. Deep down, I still wanted something which was small and pocketable for those days when I want to travel extra light. The ZV-1 is marketed as a vlogging camera, I presume to avoid taking too much market share from Sony’s RX100 line. In reality the ZV-1 is also an impressive stills camera with Sony’s all singing autofocus system, their latest 1 inch sensor and a top-notch f1.8-f2.8 zoom lens. It also has a number of features which the latest RX100 doesn’t - such as a built-in neutral density filter, a hot shoe, and some video features which will be genuinely useful to anyone looking for a sophisticated yet highly portable vlogging camera. I succumbed to a good deal at my local Argos store, which included the Bluetooth shooting grip.
Last but by no means least, this year I finally updated my largely unused 10-year-old mobile phone. I’ve been staving this off for a very long time and felt the purchase wouldn’t be worthwhile unless I found something I actively wanted to use for more than just talking. Enter the Sony Xperia Pro-I - a phone that is also a professionally specified camera, or perhaps better described as a camera which is also a phone.
Sony A7C vs ZV-1 vs Xperia Pro-I as Travel Cameras
It’s interesting to make a comparison between the full frame Sony A7C with its kit lens, and the little ZV-1 in the context of recreational photography.
The wide aperture of the ZV-1 lens means I can shoot at low ISO values, thereby negating the ISO advantage of the A7C’s much larger sensor when paired with its 28-60 f4-f5.6 kit lens. The same applies to depth of field - the wide maximum aperture on the ZV-1 can approximate quite well to the widest aperture value of the A7C’s kit lens. Because of that, it can be incredibly difficult to tell between images made with either camera. Obviously the A7C has the glaring advantage of being able to accept a spectrum of lenses to cover a multitude of photographic scenarios. However that will come with a size and weight penalty so I’m limiting this discussion to kit lenses.
There are of course a number of glaring differences between the 1” sensor ZV-1 and the fabulous full frame sensor on the A7C. One is dynamic range, although the ZV-1 does surprisingly well in that regard - just don’t expect to recover quite the same level of highlight detail. Then there is the tendency for small sensors to show more image noise than larger sensors (usually because there are an awful lot of pixels crammed onto a fairly small surface area). The noise issue can be largely mitigated by a fast aperture lens. Small sensors can also make it very difficult to create shallow depth of field effects (more on that in a minute). Lastly there are the limitations of a small built-in lens - these will rarely if ever match their larger non-fixed counterparts. This tends to show in edge sharpness and chromatic aberration.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the focusing of the ZV-1’s lens isn’t always as accurate as I would have liked beyond distances of around 15 feet. This is by no means an issue, but I do come home with the odd missed shot. With that in mind I tend to take two or three shots if the scene is likely to be important to me. On the flipside the ZV-1’s close-up capability is fantastic, really useful and highly accurate. In fact I’m struggling to find anything bad to say about the ZV-1 - I genuinely love using it. There’s no viewfinder, but we’ve been given a hot shoe which for me is more important. The ZV-1 ticks far more boxes for me than the RX100 models. It benefits from a flippy screen, a very good on-board mic, a mic jack, a recording lamp, a built-in neutral density filter and a fast standard zoom lens akin to older RX100 iterations. The most recent RX100 has an impressive zoom range of 24 to 200 mm, but with a slow maximum aperture (not something I would entertain on a camera with a 1 inch sensor). The ZV-1 doesn’t have as good build quality as the RX100, but that’s reflected in the more modest price point.
I won’t go into the detailed specifications of the cameras I mention here, because that’s easy enough for you to look up. It’s more interesting to show some pictures with comparisons. But before I do, there’s another device I really need to mention - my latest smart phone. I invested an eye watering sum in the Sony Xperia Pro-I and it’s no exaggeration to say that this is an all-round communication and image making powerhouse. I will happily grab my phone for personal outings if the images aren’t intended for any critical usage such as very large prints. I say that because the phone limits me to a resolution of 12 megapixels and the tiny lenses inherent to smartphones cannot compete with those of a good quality compact camera. The great thing about the Pro-I is the fact the files are far less processed and computational than those from its competitors. The RAW files are what you would expect from a RAW file and the video capabilities are exceptionally good as well.
It’s also worth mentioning ‘the compact camera that got away’. I missed out on a great deal for a used Canon G1X III. This is a terrific (albeit very expensive) APS-C compact (about the same size as the Panasonic LX100ii) with a fixed zoom lens like the kind you’d see with an entry level DSLR. It has a viewfinder, leaf shutter, built in ND filter, weather sealing, and excellent autofocus. It lacks 4k video, which is a great shame. It’s still on my list if I can find a used bargain.
Sensor Size and Shallow Depth of Field
One of the more common complaints about small sensor compact cameras is the lack of shallow depth of field, even at the widest available aperture. If you intend to use your compact camera for portraits or creative photography then any failings on this front may push you towards a larger sensor camera with the additional size and weight which normally goes with it.
There are a number of determiners when it comes to separating your subject from the background. These include focal length, aperture size, camera to subject distance, subject to background distance, and sensor size. As you can see, there are several things we can try to juggle in order to get the effect we want, but without some flexibility on focal length and aperture we may find that cameras with smaller sensors can limit any prospect of shallow depth of field effects.
A camera’s crop factor (vs full frame FX format) will help us to work out our depth of field at a given aperture value. For example most APS-C cameras have a crop factor of x1.5. This means that if we placed a 50 mm lens on that camera, the field of view would be similar to that of a 75 mm lens on a full frame camera. Similarly an aperture value of F4 would look like f6 on a camera which has a full frame sensor. In other words there is just over a stop of difference in depth of field. A 4/3 sensor has a crop factor of x2, and a 1 inch sensor as a crop factor of approximately x2.7. A 2/3” compact camera has a crop factor of around x3.9.
As you can see, if our chosen compact camera has a small sensor (and hence a high crop factor) then having a wide maximum aperture is quite important. And not just from a depth of field point of view, but also to maximise the amount of light the sensor can gather and therefore reduce the effects of image noise which will become more noticeable as sensor size decreases.
My Sony ZV-1 has a 1 inch sensor and a fast f1.8 to f2.8 24-70mm (equivalent) zoom lens. My full frame Sony A7C has an f4 to f5.6 28-60mm kit zoom lens. If we apply the aforementioned crop factor to the ZV-1 we can see that depth of field and noise levels will be very close to what we would see if using the A7C.
My Xperia Pro-I smartphone has a 1 inch sensor but only around 60% of that is used, so the crop factor of my phone is actually in the region of x3.9. Having some additional depth of field isn’t always a bad thing - it’s useful for landscapes, street scenes, and close-up photography. But given my phone has a maximum aperture of F2 we’re not going to get as much subject separation as we would with a larger sensor camera (we’ll also get higher noise levels) or a telephoto lens. You can see the relative similarities and differences from the photographs below.
Many smart phones do of course have a ‘portrait’ mode which uses a processing algorithm to separate what the camera perceives to be the main subject, whilst adding a blur effect to the background. The amount of blur can be controlled on many smartphones via a slider in the photo app. Some smartphones are better at this than others, but overall I find the effect nothing more than a bit of fun and not something I would want to utilize.
Shooting with the Pro-I’s 50 mm equivalent lens will give you some background compression but since the sensor is smaller on the tele camera than the main camera I try to stay within ISO 400 and below. The images aren’t quite as sharp and detailed either. I tend to stick with the 24mm main camera.
Given the overall high quality of the images coming from the Pro-I’s main camera, there’s little to complain about. Particularly when we consider how portable and convenient a smartphone is, albeit a fairly large one like this. I suspect that depth of field control will be something many of us will miss when photographing with our phones, but given how flat and portable a phone needs to be there will always be some trade-offs. The Xperia Pro-I also has Sony’s excellent autofocus features which make it a truly useful image making device.
Sony A7C vs ZV-1 vs Xperia Pro-I Image Comparisons
Below are some shots taken around my garden on a late summer evening. The photographs will give you a good idea of the comparative depth of field differences of each device when shot at its maximum aperture. Maintaining the maximum aperture means shooting at the widest available focal length (on the Xperia Pro-I I’m using the main camera which has a 24mm equivalent focal length and an f2.0 maximum aperture). The widest apertures and the extremes of a zoom range are likely to show a lens’s weaknesses. It’s not uncommon for even an expensive lens to be slightly soft at very wide aperture values - the ZV-1 does well in that regard (and is even sharper if stopped down slightly).
From left to right: Sony A7C, Sony ZV-1, Sony Xperia Pro-I:
I think the conclusion is that each device has turned out very pleasing results indeed, with respect to depth of field and detail. The A7C with its kit lens and the little ZV-1 come out broadly even (at least with respect to casual leisure images like this) making the latter camera the one I reach for consistently for recreational shooting. In most cases it’s very difficult to tell the images apart. The A7C’s lens is sharper as you would expect and the full frame sensor returns more detail. But overall, it’s surprisingly close in most everyday situations. The focus accuracy of the A7C is extraordinarily good and even though the ZV-1 has a highly sophisticated focusing system, it isn’t quite as reliable.
The Pro-I is extremely impressive on the autofocus front and it’s hard to find anything to criticise - and that’s before you look at the video features of the Pro-I (which I’ll save for another day). As far as phones go, it doesn’t get any better than the Pro-I given the level of professional control it offers the user.
Although a typical travel lens is a compact zoom, there are plenty of photographers who prefer a fixed focal length and hence the opportunity to use a wide aperture value. A lightweight prime lens which I rate very highly is the Sony FE 28mm f2 - it’s small and balances beautifully on my A7C. This is where the full frame sensor will shine if you don’t need a zoom lens for your walkabout picture taking.