Sony ZV-E10 II vs ZV-E1 for New Creators: Which to Buy, the Settings That Matter, and S-Log3 Made Simple

If you are buying your first "real" camera to make videos, Sony's ZV line is where a lot of people land — and the question is usually which one. The short answer: start with the ZV-E10 II, step up to the ZV-E1. DPReview's 2026 vlogging guide picks the ZV-E10 II for ambitious vloggers alongside the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and Canon PowerShot V1; the ZV-E1 is the full-frame camera people graduate to. This guide covers how to choose between them, the one setting decision that shapes every clip you shoot, and how to turn flat S-Log3 into something you would post — without learning colour grading first.

Both cameras share Sony's creator features and the same colour tools — S-Cinetone, S-Log3 with S-Gamut3.Cine, and 10-bit 4:2:2 recording — so the look you can get is closer than the prices suggest. The gap is the sensor and the stabilisation. The ZV-E10 II has a 26-megapixel APS-C sensor and records 4K up to 60p (with a 1.1× crop at 50/60p). The ZV-E1's full-frame sensor gives you shallower focus and more light to work with in dim rooms. Both have since gained 4K 120p through free Sony licence updates — the ZV-E10 II's arrived in December 2025, with a noticeable crop.

One warning if you are shopping used: the original ZV-E10 is a different camera. It records 8-bit only and has no S-Cinetone profile, so almost everything below about log does not apply to it.

Sony gives you two ways to record colour on these cameras, and they suit different creators. S-Cinetone (picture profile PP11) is Sony's cinematic look baked in — soft contrast, flattering skin, ready to post. S-Log3 (PP8) records a flat, grey image that holds far more highlight and shadow detail, and only looks right after you grade it.

Log is not hard, but it has three rules, and breaking any of them is why so much S-Log3 looks bad.

1. Use PP8, not PP9. Both record S-Log3; PP8 pairs it with S-Gamut3.Cine, PP9 with the wider S-Gamut3. Most S-Log3 LUTs — ours included — expect S-Gamut3.Cine, so PP9 footage comes out with slightly wrong colour.

2. Expose brighter than looks right. S-Log3 puts mid-grey high and its shadows are thin, so exposing "correctly" by the meter gives noisy footage. Most Sony shooters expose one to one-and-a-half stops brighter and bring it down in the edit. On the ZV-E1, S-Log3 starts at ISO 640. Just do not push the sky or a window to pure white — nothing brings clipped highlights back.

3. Record 10-bit and lock white balance. Both cameras record 10-bit 4:2:2, and log needs it — 8-bit log bands in skies and walls as soon as you grade it.

You do not need to learn colour correction to use log. A LUT built for S-Log3 does two jobs in one file: it decodes the flat image back to normal contrast and colour, and it applies a look. (If you want the background, what a LUT is and what it cannot do covers it.)

• DaVinci Resolve: on the Color page, right-click a node and choose the LUT. If the shot is too bright or dark, fix exposure on a node before the LUT, then let the LUT do the rest.
• Premiere Pro: Lumetri Color › Basic Correction › Input LUT.
• Final Cut Pro: the Custom LUT effect, or Camera LUT in the inspector.
• CapCut: Adjust › LUT › import the .cube.

Two mistakes to avoid: do not stack a Sony conversion LUT under a creative one that already decodes (you convert twice), and never put a log LUT on footage you shot in S-Cinetone — it is already finished, and the LUT will blow it out.

1. Log on an 8-bit camera. The original ZV-E10 records 8-bit only — skip log on it.
2. Auto white balance in log. Colour drifts through the shot and every LUT inherits it.
3. The wrong LUT for the profile. A D-Log, Apple Log or generic "cinematic" LUT on S-Log3 decodes the wrong curve. Match the LUT to what you shot.
4. Underexposed log. Dark S-Log3 falls apart into noise when you lift it. Expose brighter, protect the highlights.
5. Treating the grade as the finish line. The camera and the grade are the easy half; the hook, captions and thumbnail are what get the video watched.

Once the grade is a one-node job, the rest of the loop is the same for any camera — the one we walk through for the Osmo Pocket 4 and the iPhone 18 Pro: find the angle, script it to time, record, grade, then caption, score and ship. iReelz covers the parts around the camera — trend research, timed scripts, captions and hashtags per platform, licensed music and thumbnails — so the ZV does what it is good at and the rest takes minutes.