YouTube content creator Sidney Diongzon recently tried out the Sony Xperia PRO-I camera, putting it to work for both professional cinematic footage and also as a ‘dad-cam’ capturing moments with his family. “I wanted to use it how a dad would use it with their family, but then I also wanted to use it more professionally to showcase that side of it,” Diongzon explains. “So I filmed some cinematic pieces of my family, and then I would also put it on a gimbal and integrate that footage with my other professional footage from my Sony Alpha 7S III and my Sony Alpha 7 IV.”

“It's basically like a Sony camera in your pocket.” – Sidney Diongzon

Diongzon put the device to the test, shooting it from 24 frames up to 120, as well as giving the 4K capabilities a go, and he was impressed with the results. The Sony Xperia PRO-I's interface gave him full creative control of everything he was capturing. “It definitely helped when I was filming with it because it reminded me of changing the parameters on my Sony off cameras,” he explains. “Just to keep to a certain white balance, making sure that I'm shooting it at a certain f-stop and stuff like that. That was really helpful. And just knowing that I have those exact settings versus an iPhone where you have to guess. With the Sony Xperia PRO-I, I can actually set the exact parameters that I would want from my Sony Alpha cameras, but I'm doing it on a phone.”

He continues, “From someone who has experience using cameras in general, it was just nice to know that there is a phone that can enable those features for me to customize. Since I have experience with Sony Alpha cameras specifically, the video interface was really intuitive for me.”

In addition to having the professional camera settings that he can change in the menu, Diongzon uses the Xperia PRO-I's zoom. “It sounds like a silly thing, but the fact that I can zoom on a phone as if it were a camcorder or whatever, is actually pretty cool,” he says. There’s a zoom rocker that I can slide on the right of the screen. When I slide it up, it’ll zoom very smoothly and I can even control the speed settings of the zoom if I want to.”

“Using it as a dad-cam, just filming my kid's soccer game, that zoom is really a pretty handy tool. And then also with the zoom rocker, if you wanted to film cinematic pieces, you can create the vertigo effect where the background can move a certain way. If you put that on a gimble, you can walk forward and you push back or you zoom out or vice versa. You can come up with some pretty cool stuff.”

Diongzon also used the Xperia PRO-I to take images, and says that overall whether you’re shooting photo or video, it’s a great tool to complement your Sony Alpha system. “I loved the screen, just to see the clarity and the details of the screen was so helpful. Being able to take photos and then using the different parameters of the camera setting, like shooting at a low aperture, was great. There are so many situations where you want to be discreet and not bring out a big, bulky camera. If I’m on a plane and want to grab a little B-roll shot of the clouds going by, it’s a lot easier to pull out a phone. Then I can use the zoom features if I want to go in on close-ups of something that I’m seeing. If you want to be discreet but still get some really good looking video, that’s where I’d pull out the Xperia PRO-I.”

See more of Sidney Diongzon’s work on his YouTube Channel, and catch him in the latest episode of The Lowdown.