Rumors about a Sony ZV1 vlogging camera started swirling last week, and now a new leak has suggested the compact could well be en route – along with some very promising video skills.
Sony Alpha Rumors is confident that the "compact selfie camera" will arrive on May 26 and will come with "existing Real Time AF and Real time Eye AF".
If, as we expect, this means the ZV1 will have the latest version of Sony's autofocus modes, then it should be able to use them in both continuous autofocus and video modes.
The latter would, of course, be a big boon for vloggers and it seems a likely inclusion, given it's already on the Sony RX100 VII. Eye AF has been around for many years, but it only recently made the move to video thanks to the most recent camera processors.
Real-time Eye AF for video is particularly handy if you like to shoot your YouTube videos wide open, to help produce a lovely blurry background, but without worrying if your eyes are in focus as you move around the frame.
So what other features are rumored for the ZV1? According to Sony Alpha Rumors, the compact will have an improved microphone, vari-angle LCD, a lens with an f/1.8-f/2.8 aperture, a "One Touch Bokeh feature" and "Auto Object Detect".
The latter two features would be new, as we haven't seen them on any other Sony camera. And while it's not exactly clear what either of them are, it's fair to assume they're again related to Sony's intelligent autofocus, which uses predictive algorithms and object recognition to track certain objects through the frame.
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Battle of the cams
As interesting as these new Sony ZV1 leaks are, there's still an awful lot we don't know about the rumored compact camera, including its sensor size, focal length, viewfinder or price tag.
A camera like the ZV1 would also need to pack more tricks up its sleeve to compete with our current favorite compact vlogging camera, the Canon PowerShot G7X Mark III. That camera has a microphone input and the ability to livestream directly to YouTube via Wi-Fi, which is pretty unique among compacts.
Still, if Sony really has engineered a compact camera solely for vloggers, then it's certainly possible that we'll see some of the best features of the RX100 VII combined with some new tricks for YouTubers who don't have a film crew to help with things like framing and focus.
And if the rumors about a May 26 launch are correct, we won't have to wait long to find out either. We'll bring you all of the official news as soon as we get it.
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