360Photography

Hands-on with the Zeiss ZX1

We’ve seen Android-based cameras before, we’ve seen primarily touchscreen-based cameras before and we’ve seen full frame compacts with built-in 35mm lenses, but we’ve never seen anything that combines them, which is essentially what Zeiss’s ZX1 does.

Zeiss’s first entry into the digital camera market has echoes of the touchscreen-based Leica TL, it also can’t help but conjure-up thoughts of Sony’s RX1 cameras, which are also built around 35mm F2 lenses on full frame chips. What it doesn’t feel like, though, are Samsung’s erstwhile Android-based Galaxy cameras or Nikon’s Coolpix S800c, which felt like smartphones with a lens glued onto the front.

We got the chance to handle and explore a pre-production ZX1 at CP+ in Yokohama. Zeiss isn’t yet giving a release date for the ZX1 so it’s difficult to know how close to finished it is, but the camera seemed stable and to have most features in place, so we can at least describe how it’s going to work.

ZX1 Physical controls

There are only five physical control points on the camera: dedicates aperture, shutter speed and ISO dials, a solitary function button and a sprung switch at the base of the shutter speed dial. Everything else is controlled via the touchscreen.

All three dials have ‘A’ positions, if you want to hand-off control of their function to the camera. The shutter speed dial only goes up to 1/1000 sec since that’s where the camera’s leaf shutter tops-out. You’ll also notice there’s an ‘H’ position, though. This switches the camera over to electronic shutter mode, to access shutter speeds up to 1/8000 sec, via the touchscreen. At the other end of the scale there’s a ‘L’ setting for shutter speeds longer than a second. There are Low and High positions on the ISO dial, too.

ZX1 power switch

But before we get into the details of the touchscreen, we should take a closer look at that sprung switch. At first glance, this little nub looks like a power switch, but it’s not quite that simple. Although it is the way you turn the camera on and off, this three-position switch provides access to the ZX1’s video shooting mode, too, and it’s also how you put the camera to sleep.

Because it’s an Android device, the ZX1 doesn’t just leap into life when you flick the power switch forward from being off – it starts to boot up, which just like a smartphone, takes a little while. To avoid you having to go through this ordeal every time you want to take a shot, pulling the switch back doesn’t turn the camera off: instead, like a smartphone it just sends it to sleep: powering down the sensor and screen. Pull the switch back for three seconds and it’ll completely shut the camera down. Push it forward while shooting and you enter video mode. We’re told that in ‘sleep’ mode, your battery should only drain by about 10% over the course of a day.

The function button can be reconfigured. With the current firmware it’s an AEL button but you can also get it to control a couple of other functions, including AFL.

ZX1 Swipe bar

The first thing you’ll notice about the ZX1’s touchscreen is that it’s not flat. Instead there’s a distinct crease (but a lovely, smooth one that we suspect must be quite costly) around 1.5 cm in from the right-hand edge. This angled strip of screen is home to a series of icons, which are used for controlling everything else on the camera. In stills mode they’re displayed on a black background but in video mode they’re overlaid on the preview, which expands out to use the full 16:9 expanse of the screen.

There are four icons to a page and swiping your finger up or down along the control strip scrolls through the available options. The top option on the strip is exposure compensation and tapping it brings up a vertical slider so that you can swipe-in the amount you want to apply. Most of the other options work in the same way, popping up a small virtual slider to adjust the setting. Some options also present three dots in a circle, giving you access to a menu with more detailed settings.

Menus, playback and the Android homescreen

What’s not quite so obvious is that there’s another, un-indicated swipeable region along the right-hand-side of the screen. Swipe up and you’ll enter the camera’s main menu, swipe down and you’ll enter playback mode. Left and right swipes change the level of information shown on the screen.

Only if you swipe down do you get a a little 3-dot icon that then finally lets you see the homepage of familiar circular icons that belie the camera’s Android underpinnings. At present, the available apps are locked-down, for security purposes but will be opened up somewhat when the camera is finished. We doubt that Zeiss will simply allow all Google Play apps to be accessible, though.

ZX1 battery and battery life

All the extra processing to run a more complex operating system has the predictable effect on battery life. The ZX1 packs a pretty sizable battery pack that offers around 3190mAh. At present Zeiss is discussing a figure of around 250 shots per charge when tested in a manner comparable with the CIPA standard. We’ll see whether this improves at all with the last bits of fine-tuning of code, prior to launch.

This image gives you a better idea of the angled right-hand portion of the rear display, which follows the angle of the body shell. It really is beautifully done.

ZX1 construction

Back on the physical side of things, the camera has a solid-feeling metal body. The right-hand edges are wrapped with a thin rubberized coating, which means it feels surprisingly secure in the hand. I found myself rotating my hand to the right to adjust my grip whenever I held the camera, but I’m not sure if this was a conscious attempt to more comfortably reach the shutter button or an unconscious attempt to access a front control wheel that doesn’t exist.

The top left of the camera is the only other non-metal body panel: a plastic cover that looks for all the world like it should conceal a pop-up flash but is actually a ‘window’ in the camera’s metal shell to allow the Wi-Fi to communicate efficiently. Given the large files (~70MB per uncompressed Raw), the Wi-FI needs to work as effectively as possible.

Storage, image management and output

What you can’t see on the ZX1 is that it has no memory card slot. Instead it has a vast 500GB SSD built in. We weren’t told exactly how much of that space is taken up by the operating system, but that’s still a ridiculously large amount of space. To sensibly manage such a large drive, the ZX1 lets you shoot what it calls ‘collections’. Essentially these are image folders on the camera’s internal drive, so that you can easily find the images to took on a particular shoot. They appear as separate folders if you connect a device to the exposed USB C socket on the left-hand side of the camera.

Interestingly, because it has an onboard operating system the ZX1 can act both as a slave device (effectively a computer will see it as a massive memory card, as you’d expect from a conventional camera) or a host device that can read a USB memory stick or hard drive plugged into it. This means you can transfer images from the camera to an external drive without ever having to connect to a computer.

Summing up

One advantage the Zeiss has over previous attempts at Android-based cameras is that it’s not trying to compete on price with less-sophisticated mass-market models, meaning (in theory) fewer corners should need to be cut in terms of processing power or memory.

The company say they’ve also stripped the Android implementation back to the bare essentials and focused on building a camera interface, rather than trying to use any of the operating system’s built-in camera capabilities. And even in this non-final form, this decision appear to have paid-off, with the interface working smoothly.

If anything, it’s Zeiss’s decision to include an ISO dial, rather than an exposure comp control (or an unmarked dial to let you choose which you want access to), that took us longest to adapt to in our brief time with the camera. Zeiss believes that a lot of people will manually set exposure, leaving ISO effectively playing the role of exposure compensation. I guess we’ll see how that feels once we get our hands on a testable camera in the coming months.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)