Canon PowerShot V1 review: a compact video powerhouse?

After the innovative design of the PowerShot V10, Canon’s latest PowerShot V camera returns to a more typical form and design. As the V designation suggests, the Canon PowerShot V1 camera is designed primarily for video creation. In the PowerShot V range, it represents a step-up from the V10, with a design and features that those more used to a ‘proper’ camera would expect.

Canon PowerShot V1 at a glance:

• $899.99 / £959.99
• 22.3MP 1.4in-type sensor
• 16-50mm equivalent f/2.8-4.5 lens
• 3in, 1.04 m-dot fully articulated touchscreen
• Up to 30 fps continuous shooting
• 4K 30p video (unlimited recording)

The design of the V1 camera owes a lot to the PowerShot G series cameras, particularly what I would describe as the ‘classic’ line-up of G7-G12 cameras, with their bodies that are larger than you would expect from a compact camera, and handling that owed more to using a DSLR or mirrorless camera than a typical point-and-shoot camera. The V1 takes this even further, and the chunky body is more akin to a Sony ZV-E10 in size.

Indeed, the PowerShot V series seems to be Canon’s answer to Sony’s ZV range of cameras, which has a video-first approach for contemporary content creators, instead of those who would describe themselves more as videographers or photographers. But that shouldn’t put videographers and photographers off the V1; many compelling features are depending on what you shoot, particularly when it comes to the unique larger sensor -roughly the same area as a Four Thirds sensor – and the ultra-wideangle, 16-50mm equivalent zoom lens.

Features

Like any camera, the two core features of the Canon PowerShot V1 are the sensor and the lens, both of which are unique for a compact camera. The V1’s sensor is a 22.3MP CMOS chip, with a size of 18.5 x 12.3mm. This makes it a 1.4in-type sensor in a 3:2 ratio format, but it is roughly the same image area as a Four Thirds sensor, which have an imaging area of 17.3mm x 13mm.

Given the resolution and dimensions of the V1 sensor, it would appear it is a cropped version of the 32.5-million-pixel APS-C sensor found on the Canon EOS R7. I’ll point out at this stage that the sensor of the V1 is not stacked like that of the Sony ZV-1 II, which I will return to later.

The next core feature is the zoom lens. This is an 8.2-25.6mm f/2.8-4.5, which is equivalent to a 16-50mm lens on a full-frame sensor. This is extremely wide, especially for a compact camera, where traditionally lenses mimicked the classic 24-70mm, 24-105 or more recently the 24-200mm focal lengths.

This wide-angle lens choice clearly defines who the camera is for; this isn’t for general-purpose travel photography. Instead the focal length is clearly designed for video, with the super-wide-angle focal length specifically suited towards filming oneself – vlogging.

For vloggers, with many cameras the catch is that the widest point of the lens is still not wide enough to hold the camera at arm’s length comfortably and still include some of the background context, especially when things like digital stabilisation crops are accounted for. The 16mm equivalent of the V1 lens tackles this head-on, with the compromise being a much shorter telephoto end. Indeed, the camera features optical and digital stabilisation, with digital giving a 1.4x crop into the image.

It should also be mentioned that there is now a whole generation accustomed to using smartphone cameras. With these the main camera is often around 24mm, the ultra-wide 16mm or wider, and the telephoto 50mm or so. So for this generation, wider is the norm.

Other notable features, especially for video, include a built-in 3-stop ND filter, ideal for filming with larger apertures while still using slower shutter speeds. Headphone and mic sockets are included, as is a windshield that can be mounted to the hotshoe. A tally lamp on the front of the camera indicates that you are recording, and a video recording countdown timer gives you a moment to pause before you begin. Finally, there is the option to record footage in C-Log3. All of these features make it a solid camera for video recording.

Not everything is perfect, though, and some significant compromises have been made for photographers. There is no electronic viewfinder, and previous Canon accessory EVFs aren’t compatible with the V1 due to the different hotshoe connections. The hotshoe itself is a compromise; there is no central pin, so it can’t be used to fire most flash units (just Canon’s latest 21-pin Speedlites), and no pop-up flash is built-in either. Instead it’s mainly inteded for use with audio products to create a direct digital connection with the camera without using the 3.5mm sockets.

One feature that the Canon PowerShot V1 does have is a built-in fan, which is designed to dissipate the heat created from the battery and sensor when recording video. This should lead to fewer instances of camera overheating, resulting in unlimited recording times for the PowerShot V1, which should only be dictated by battery power and SD card capacity.

Canon PowerShot V1: Key features

• Storage: The camera has a single UHS-II SD card slot, which is situated in the battery compartment.
• No viewfinder: The PowerShot V1 has no built-in optical viewfinder, and existing Canon EVF’s aren’t compatible, which is a shame, as it would have helped for photography
• Fan vents: A large intake vent features on the side the camera, with exhaust vents at the top and side helping to cool the sensor and remove the hot air
• Battery: The now-common LP-E17 Li-ion battery powers the camera, which Canon quotes as good for around 400 photos or 70 minutes of video capture.
• Connectivity: The PowerShot V1 has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to connect to Canon’s Canon Connect app, which allows for image transfer, remote shooting and GPS logging.
• Windshield: A furry windshield for the built-in microphone is supplied in the box and slots onto the camera’s hot shoe

Build and Handling

One of the best things about the PowerShot V1 is its handling. Anyone who has used a PowerShot series camera, or indeed any digital camera, should feel immediately at home using the V1. Because of that built-in fan, the V1 is pretty chunky. It is 52.5mm deep compared to 46.7mm for the Sony ZV-1 II. On paper that may not sound a lot, but it does make a difference in hand. The V1 also weighs 426g compared to the ZV-1 II’s 292g.

When using the PowerShot V1, you feel like you’re using something much more akin to an APS-C mirrorless camera than a typical compact. This harks back to previous PowerShot premium cameras, where the emphasis was always on image quality and usability rather than an especially compact size.

Regarding usability, the button layout is straightforward and familiar. On top, there is a dedicated dial that takes you through the various exposure modes. The inclusion of this mode dial is a real benefit to the V1, as it’s lacking on the ZV-1 II, which can be awkward to use if you regularly change settings.

Just below that is a photo/video mode switch. Also on top is an on/off button, a shutter button with a zoom lever around it, and a record start/stop button. The rear of the camera has a traditional setup with four distinct buttons to access regularly used features, followed by the typical directional control with a centre button and a dial around the outside. The final control is a dial found at the base of the lens, which by default is used as an aperture ring, leaving the rear control dial to adjust the shutter speed when needed.

The battery compartment and SD card socket are on the bottom of the camera. The HDMI socket, USB-C, and mic and headphone input/outputs are on the side of the camera, underneath large, rubberised covers. 

The camera’s build is good, feeling solid and fairly robust. There are some nice touches; holding the camera at arm’s length and filming yourself feels comfortable, due to a nicely raised nub at the back. At the same time, it doesn’t detract from the handling of the camera when you are using it normally.

The tally light, visible both from the front and the top plate of the camera, makes it easy to tell whether you are recording if you’re sitting in front of the camera. The included wind muff sits nicely into the shoe on top of the camera, although it partially obscures the on/off button.

Overall, the V1 is straightforward to use. Touch screen controls via the onscreen quick menu make it easy to change settings such as the ND Filter without any fuss. The menu system is typical of a Canon camera. Everything feels logical, and it’s easy enough to navigate and find what you want. Its size couldn’t be described as pocketable unless you were wearing a jacket or coat, but it is undoubtedly a portable solution.

Viewfinder and screen

As previously mentioned, this camera has no electronic viewfinder, which may put photographers off. That said, the V1’s screen is good without being exceptional. It’s a standard 3-in, 1.04-million-dot vari-angle screen like those used in numerous Canon cameras. The screen is hinged on the side of the camera, so it can both flip out and rotate for low-angle shots, or if you want to, face forwards so you can film yourself.

The screen could be a little bit brighter in sunlight. Even with it turned up to its maximum, I still found it tricky to see the image on a bright day. In terms of colour and contrast, it’s just as you would expect it to be.

One nice touch related to the screen is the ability to show a countdown timer, with the screen displaying a 3-2-1 warning before recording took place. Whether you are recording yourself or someone else, it is a great way to give yourself a few seconds of composure before filming starts.

Autofocus

The PowerShot V1 uses Canon’s tried-and-tested Dual Pixel AF to autofocus, and probably the biggest compliment I can pay it is that I didn’t notice it. The performance was good overall in terms of speed and tracking, regardless of whether I was shooting still or video, using a tracking point or the touchscreen to focus.

The AF system covers 100% of the sensor, which means that when you’re shooting photos, there are 3,431 selectable positions, and when you’re in movie mode, there are 3,139 selectable positions, due to the 16:9 crop. It has a closest focusing distance of 5cm at its widest focal length. Remember though that this is a super-wideangle lens, so you won’t get a particularly macro-looking perspective.

The V1 has subject recognition which is limited to humans or animals, and which can simply be left set to Auto detect. Again, I found it works well when vlogging. I could hold the camera at arm’s length, and my face and eyes were detected quite quickly and then tracked easily without hesitation.

In its default mode in video, I did find that when doing focus pulls between different points, the transition was relatively quick after you touched the screen. The AF shifted rapidly, which is great if you’re taking photographs but isn’t always what you want in video, where you’d prefer a less jarring, slower movement. This speed can be adjusted in the settings.

This isn’t really a camera for shooting sports or wildlife. It’s only a 50mm equivalent lens at its longest, so at best, you’re going to be photographing children running around (which means you can take full advantage of the 15fps fastest shooting rate, or 30fps if you use the electronic shutter). Or maybe you might use it for documentary and street photography, or travel snaps. For that, the autofocus is more than fast enough.

Performance

I have to say I did enjoy using the PowerShot V1. The 16mm super wide-angle lens provided a different field of view that you don’t usually get from a compact camera. Taking shots where you look up at tall buildings or trees towering over you and leaning into the centre of the frame made the V1 quite an interesting creative tool. Similarly, looking for objects in the foreground that I could place quite close to the camera to help balance travel or landscape shots was also interesting. The super wide-angle lens changes how you use and think about the camera.

Of course, at the 50mm end, it becomes a regular street photography camera. But on many occasions, I wanted the zoom to go a little bit further. For this reason, I think the lens and camera performance present an interesting proposition for photographers because it offers something quite unique. But only if you know that you will regularly be using that super wide-angle feature.

There is a fair amount to discuss regarding features and performance for video. First of all, it has gone somewhat underplayed that the camera records all video in 4:2:2 10-bit quality.  This has led to a busy, but straightforward choice of video settings. The options depend on whether you have NTSC or PAL selected, but you can shoot 4K at 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60p with either Standard or Light Intra-Picture Distance (IPD). The light version produces fewer keyframes and has higher compression, but quality should still be more than good enough for the vlogging market.

I found the wide-angle 16mm lens to be great for vlogging. You could hold the camera at arm’s length and film yourself while still including a lot of the background to put some context to the shot. When you use the digital stabilisation and enhanced stabilisation, even holding it at arm’s length and considering the digital crop, I still don’t feel like my face appeared huge in the scene. However, you did lose some of that context.

You also need that 16mm wide-angle lens when shooting in 4K at 50p or 60p because this mode has a 1.4x crop. Even then, the field of view is equivalent to 22mm, so it’s still a decent broad perspective. Digital stabilisation can’t be used in 50/60p, so you’re not going to be cropping in any further. With this in mind, 4K 50/60p is probably best suited to creating slow-motion B-roll footage, where, when slowed down, any camera movements are less noticeable. It also seems that optical stabilisation is always switched on when recording video, so that is some comfort. There is also FullHD slow-motion capture at up to 100fps, but without audio capture at these faster frame rates.

I shot most of my video at 4K at 25 frames per second to use the stabilisation to keep my image looking nice and steady, but there are some caveats to this. The standard digital stabilisation crops in and works well, but as you would expect, isn’t quite as smooth when moving or walking along. There is a sudden background blurring, particularly noticeable in the corners, every time you take a step. It is possibly a combination of rolling shutter, shutter speed, and keyframing, which could perhaps be solved by using a shutter speed faster than the standard ‘twice the frame rate’. But sadly, I wasn’t quite able to get to the bottom of it during my short time with the camera.

Switching to Enhanced stabilisation created even more pronounced effects at the edges of the image, similar to Adobe Premiere’s Warp Stabiliser tool. I spoke to AP Contributor Ken Eakins about this, as he has also used the V1, and he confirmed that this occurs with Canon’s Enhanced digital stabilisation and is much better suited for static, tripod-esque shots. Walking with Enhanced stabilisation switched on produces less bounce from walking, but once you notice the strange warping and blur effect in the corners, it is something you can’t unsee.

I mentioned earlier that the sensor isn’t stacked, so the readout speed is slower than on Sony’s 1” stacked sensor cameras. This is noticeable if you’re doing rapid panning shots. It’s far from the worst I’ve seen, and when doing a moderate-speed pan from left to right, it’s fine for content creation rather than high-end video. But if you quickly pan the camera, you will notice it.

One excellent feature is the built-in audio. The quality of voice recording from the built-in mic is great, with voices picked out perfectly and background noise softened. When using the camera at arm’s length, I honestly think that as long as you are speaking a reasonable volume, you can get away without needing to use a lav mic or shotgun mic.

Metering

I left the PowerShot V1 pretty much to its own devices when it came to metering, using its evaluative setting. It did a reasonable job in most cases, and if anything, I would say it slightly erred on the side of caution when it came to protecting highlights. I thought a few images were slightly underexposed, typically scenes partly in shade. It seemed to prioritise the highlights slightly and forsake some of the foreground, leaving it in shadow.

Conversely, given a quite bright scene, it was clear that this wasn’t a full-frame sensor, and I think the highlights were brighter than I would expect. However, this is largely nitpicking, and it was easiest enough to adjust the exposure compensation or use one of the Highlight Tone Priority modes for JPEG images.

When shooting video, one thing that was quite annoying with the metering was when you went from a very light to a dark environment and vice versa, with the ND filter set to Auto. Moving from one extreme to another, it seemed to take a few seconds for the ND filter to engage and the exposure to change accordingly.

Image quality

Image quality is what you would expect—it seems to show slightly more detail in highlight and shadow areas compared to a 1” sensor, and it behaves more like a densely packed APS-C size sensor, which in effect it is. The JPEG colour looks very much like we have come to expect from a Canon camera – rich blues and greens. The results resemble the punchy shots you would see from a smartphone, and you can see this when comparing the raw and JPEG files.

It is a similar performance from the lens, with the centre looking nice and sharp in the centre regardless of the zoom length. There is a gradual drop off towards the edges when at the widest, and whilst there is still a lot of definition in the corners, you can see some slight blur.  Overall it is good for a compact camera, especially given that it is targeted for video rather than photography.

There was no significant vignetting that I noticed, but there was a little curvilinear distortion visible in JPEG images. A photo of brick wall showed slight barrel distortion when standing around 1m away. Something I did notice was purple fringing visible in the corners of very high contrast edges when shooting at 16mm with the aperture at f/2.8.

I shot with the camera up to ISO 32,000 in a dimly room and found that the JPEG image dealt with noise very well, with little to no colour noise, except slight bruised magenta/green patches in shadows. There is well-suppressed luminance noise, although this means that the sharpness and definition take a hit. Raw files are similar in terms of colour noise, but by default have a very grainy and pronounced texture to them when viewed in Adobe Bridge.

ISO 6400 is where things start to look a lot cleaner for both raw and JPEG files, although there is still a loss in fine detail. Images at ISO 3200 look more useable and particularly more acceptable if you need to shoot in lower light – remember the maximum aperture of the lens is f/2.8 and not f/1.8 with the Sony ZV-1 (although the V1 has does have the larger sensor of the two). Finally at ISO 1600 the details such as fine hair start to become a lot more defined. Again, this really does behave a lot like you would expect an APS-C or Four Thirds camera in terms of its noise performance.

At the base ISO 100 setting, even using the wide 16mm setting, brickwork and leaves in distant buildings and trees are sharp and distinct.

Canon PowerShot V1 : Our Verdict

For photographers, the Canon PowerShot V1 could be an interesting choice for those who want a point-and-shoot for travel. That said, I think for most photographers maximum 50mm focal length may be too limiting – a 20-70mm lens may have been a better option.

With all the video options it looks like a great option for videographers, with features such as 10-bit 4:2:2 capture, built-in ND, mic and headphone sockets, exceptional built-in audio, a super wide-angle lens, and C-Log recording. However, the electronic stabilisation and Auto-ND exposure quirks just take the edge off what is otherwise an excellent compact video camera.

Then there is the price. At £959, it is around the same price as Canon’s own APS-C R50 V mirrorless camera with a 14-30mm (20-45mm equiv.) lens, and they are of a similar size. The  APS-C Sony mirrorless ZV-E10 II and 16-50mm lens are around the sameat  £950, whilst the original version ZV E-10 can be found with lens for around £630.  Finally, it is £150 more than the compact Sony ZV-1 II. All of this is without mentioning the DJI Osmo Pocket III, which is currently the go-to camera for most vlogging content creators and costs around £489.

So, the Canon PowerShot V1 finds itself in a very strange position in the current market. For photographers it could perhaps be thought of as a ZV-1 with better handling and ergonomics. For video, although there are few other compact camera options, its size puts it in competition with many mirrorless cameras that have been specifically designed with content creators in mind.

Related content: I’ve been using the new Canon V1 compact camera and it’s not just for video

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Canon PowerShot V1: Full specifications

Sensor	22.3MP CMOS, 18.5 x 12.3
Output size	5760×384
Focal length mag	1.95x
Lens	8.2-25.6mm f/2.8-4.5 (16-50mm equivalent)
Shutter speeds	30sec – 1/2000sec (mechanical); 30sec – 1/16,000sec (electronic)
Sensitivity	ISO 100-32,000; ISO 51,200 extended
Exposure modes	P, Av, Tv, M, Creative Auto
Metering	Evaluative, spot, centre-weighted average
Exposure comp	+/-3 EV in 0.3 EV steps
Continuous shooting	15fps (mechanical shutter), 30fps (electronic shutter)
Screen	3in 1.04m-dot vari-angle touchscreen
Viewfinder	None
AF points	3431
Video	4K 60fps (cropped); 4K 30fps (full width); Full HD 120fps
External mic	3.5mm stereo; Advanced shoe
Memory card	UHS-II SD
Power	LP-E17 Li-ion
Battery life	400 shots / 1hr 10min video
Dimensions	118.3 x 68.0 x 52.5 mm
Weight	426g