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The ZR does accept timecode input via bluetooth and can output TC via HDMI.

By the by, we have to look inward to determine what constitutes a cinema camera. In my case, you could give me an Alexa and it wouldn’t be a cinema camera as I’d never be able to make anything for the cinema with it. Unless I modified it to turn it into a popcorn maker.

I hadn’t truly appreciated just how much of a normalised activity this was until I saw these for sale in my local supermarket recently. I do fear for what people are eating who use this one if their bowel movements are such that they have to take their watch off to do it. Although maybe that is to stop the watch thinking they are having a vigorous workout when they are doing a more old fashioned bathroom activity.

Now we are aligned. The term has become meaningless (or always was meaningless). 😀 About the only real definition could be "a camera used to film something that screens in a cinema" and nowadays, that includes iPhones and GoPros. Heck, a bunch of the best scenes (motorcycle jump, jumping from plane to plane) in the two latest Mission Impossible films were shot on the humble Z Cam E2-F6 and I'm pretty sure it was recording ProRes 422 (HQ?). On the big screen, it played just fine with their Burano/Venice (or whatever it was) that was used as the A Cam. If that $3k camera, released in 2018 can play in a megabudget feature film, just about any camera on the market today can do the same - including your phone. And now that same phone has a dock which will give it things like timecode and the latest version of it can record ProRes RAW internally. Many of us read the news on our cinema camera daily while sitting on the toilet. 😉

Everyone knows you can use an FX3, or an iphone, or a 5D2, or a ZR to make a great movie, and they knew it before making clickbait videos about how crazy it is that someone would use the FX3 for their project. Doesn't make any of those into cinema cameras. If the definition of a cinema camera is that you can use it to make a movie, then let me just respond to a few work emails on my cinema camera -- which, btw, has seen use in some of my serious projects as the best tool forthe job in that scenario.

Thats why The Creator shot on FX3 was so surprising for these categorizer youtubers. Many of mirrorless lenses don't cover the image circle of Raptor's VV sensor. But the actual film makers don't care about the vignette and use them anyway. Its not like "You can use Komodo for still photography". Its like these filmmakers recognize these lenses as cine tools.

Or is Mackey playing Depp playing Mackey...

That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry 🙂 Since you never know on the internet, I'm mostly tongue in cheek with all that. I don't really care what anyone calls anything, I understand marketing always has a dubious relationship with the truth, and I always evaluate purchase decisions based on the capabilities rather than name. (And I said the same thing about the "box" moniker someone slapped on the C50 rumors, so I'm not here bashing Nikon.) But in seriousness, the broader a term grows, the less valuable it is. If everything is a cinema camera, nothing is a cinema camera.

If you're upset about hybrid-styled cameras with somewhat awkward ergonomics being called "cinema camera," you must have been frustrated since 2018 or so. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketcinemacamera I'd be inclined to say that "cinema camera" is just about as meaningless as calling an image "cinematic." It means plenty of different things to different people. "How can you call it a cinema camera when it doesn't even have SDI output?" "That ain't no cinema camera, it has no mounting points on top or the sides!" "Cinema cameras don't have autofocus" "Cinema cameras need to be dedicated to ultimate image quality and it's not a true cinema camera without 16-bit raw." The ZR is obviously not going to be the A camera on a lot of professional shoots. It has no TC, no SDI, bad HDMI, and bad memory card location. On the other hand, it might finally be fulfilling some of the promise of the Komodo - a small, light crash camera that you easily fit in small spaces - or that you can easily throw at an AC/second shooter to go get some b-roll or a second angle handheld or with a light tripod and have it be a good match SOOC for what you're shooting with your Komodo-X or V-Raptor. Lack of a physical shutter lock is a bummer for some crash cam use cases. Sorry it's not for you, regardless! I'd be willing to bet that the next iterations of the Z6/8/9/etc start working in Redcode NE too.

I think Gerald got the categorization right, and of all the things you can call the ZR, cinema camera is not one of them. No reason it can't be used for great movies. There's also no reason you can't pull still frames from a Komodo and sell them as photographs without it being a photo camera or even a hybrid. You don't need to be a photographer or a cinematographer to understand categories of tools. The thing about these comparisons between cheap and expensive cameras is that it kinda works with all cameras. The ZR isn't unique in being indistinguishable from an expensive camera when shot in a controlled environment and viewed in compressed 4K YouTube videos. It's been a few years since I had any concerns about pure image quality from really any camera. I for one have high hopes for Nikon/Red going forward, which is why I'm relatively disappointed that their first camera is not really ergonomically catered to what I'd like.

Looks like Chris got his dream fishing trip out of it so he has that going for him. Otherwise, I think the footage from the Eterna looks fine. I'd have graded it differently. Otherwise, it looks generally like a professionally-shot documentary - and given their crew size, that makes some sense. In this case, I'm using "professionally" in the sense of "competent and yet uninspired." As far as Eterna, there really weren't any shots in that documentary that could be said to look different from what would is usually captured on a full-frame camera or even S35. Some of the wide shots had at least a little bit of an epic feel, but it was nothing spectacular. I'm in the "there is no medium format look" camp, but if you're making a puff piece to sell people on a medium format camera, I feel like it might be better to prioritize the sort of epic wides that people associate with medium and large format. Regardless of any technical aspects, story is king. "Chris Niccols, professional camera reviewer, started fly fishing as a form of escapism from fatherhood" does not seem all that compelling to me. The trailer definitely didn't pull me in. It'll probably get some festival play and collect some laurels. They can celebrate that.

Your eyes do not deceive you. There are some very subtle differences in the skin tonalities, but the major difference between the two images I posted above is in the resolution: 6K vs. 8K. The Komodo 6K and Komodo X have also been tested against the ZR, but both those cameras suffer from IR pollution in the comparisons. In this regard, the Nikon has an advantage!

It’s the international break. The world turns to shit when there is no club football. There is only so much England vs Andorra that people can take. Everything will be OK again on Saturday.

Which is exactly how I’d use it with Tamron zoom’s, the: 20-40, 28-75 and 70-180 f2.8’s.

Mood? I'm just saying we have never seen a cinematic work done by the Undone, and yet he thinks he is the one who defines what cine camera should be.

Less adapters as well and no Sigma (full frame).

Why are you guys in such a bad mood this morning? Is everyone a Roger Deakins now? I'm not a professional, and a camera for less than 3K would be great for me. I film underwater every week, and sometimes I do small jobs too. Nevertheless, knowing that every time I film I bring home half a terabyte of stuff scares me, because I would also like to have the option to make some compromises. Right now I film with a GH5MII, and I only use the ALL-I codec when I'm doing something special. Having a camera that only shoots RAW is too limiting for me. So yes I leave my garage sometimes but Nikon should address that. 😄

Gerald is pissed that they call it cine camera, then complain why the only dependable codec of the camera is the one used in cine cameras. Tho I understand for a video shooter who never leave his garage room YouTube studio, the quality of h.265 is important and Nikon should address that.

People already asking for Z8 sensor in ZR body with air cooling! One thing this camera did, even before shipping, is raising expectations from Nikon. I mean with 8k60p capable stacked sensor, and IPP2 pipeline, you get almost $15k Raptor Xe image quality, with IBIS, and 1 second boot time.

I'm not trying to defend GU, in fact. If you've seen the whole video, he says that the files produced by the camera in Nraw, H.264, and H.265 suck, especially compared to the same files produced by the Z-series cameras. And that the only usable codec is RedCode. Now, is that true? Who knows. Neither you nor I have the camera in our hands right now, and I don't think it's reliable to just average all the shilltubers out there. Personally, and I don't need GU to tell me this, I find that putting the word "Cinema" on it is just a marketing gimmick. But it's certainly not the tool that prevents you from making films. Great films have been made with crappy gear for a century. Films have been made with the GH2 and 5DII.

Here is the trailer for said documentary. Not sure the title “No Guarantees” refers to the outcome of when you go fishing or the outcome of a using a £17000 medium format cinema camera to film it. I’m thinking it might be both. I’ve seen some fantastic footage from the Fujifilm 100mp GFX variants. This wasn’t it.

This was at the top of my YouTube feed today. Genuinely thought at first glance it was going to be Mackey’s review of the ZR. Maybe the world has got so twisted around that Depp is now cosplaying Mackey.

And that mount. Megadap will be rubbing their hands at the amount of E mount lenses that may well be finding a home on this camera. Not just from Sony defectors either but from new owners of the ZR who look at the plethora of appropriately sized E mount lenses on the new and used market and will consider the ZR as a de facto E mount camera.

A good video showing real world ice cream. Sorry, I meant real world usage.

All aboard the good ship Shill for a BTS about using it for an as yet unreleased documentary.