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Very detailed and cool to be honest. That said I have zero clue how this relates to anything I asked I’m beyond lost in the weeds here man. im just curious about skintones SOOC and how they’re achieved easily. No clue what makeup has to do with anything for the situation I asked.

Cam likes the PYXIS...

Yeah a headphone output would be nice, could use it as a quick and dirty back up, booming with just a cabled boom straight into the Deity recorder. But not a big deal it is "missing", as overall this is looking very appealing to me, might get one myself.

I agree on the focus on the influencer kids. In terms of if Nikon should let RED die, that's a tough call. They could retain the R&D benefits of the RED team (which is likely to have a very very different internal culture to the rest of Nikon and would be best kept separated) but without the RED guys talking directly to folks in Hollywood their ability to do R&D would be drastically reduced. RED definitely are a minor player, but they're not without any contacts.

I think it would be a much easier task to develop into this market rather than try and tackle head on the established ‘Hollywood’ industry. Pretentions of serious filmmaking? Then have someone use your new Nikon NX3’s on the sequel to ‘The Creator’, but otherwise, gifting 100 units to 100 Kool Kids for their YouTubes is extremely cost effective marketing.

Yes, that's true. However RED has been a minor player in the high-stakes Hollywood cinema production for some time. ARRI and Sony seem have an iron fist on that market. If were a Nikon exec I'd forget the Hollywood market altogether and focus 100% on the influencer kids with some new devices to make the brand cool again and throw a bone to the diehard photogs with new and improved video features in their MILCs.

I think it crops, but not a lot. 🙂 The M4 is the same sensor as the original E2 and I always found the DR to be fine on it (I wish the high dynamic range mode had worked better) and the noise was fine for me as long as the image was exposed to the right. If you exposed at all to the left, though... noise city. In the end, I sold it because I didn't need the high frame rates so much and other than that, there was nothing it did that the F6 didn't do better. Good point about used prices, btw!

Getting great skin-tones was also a huge focus of film development. Here's a pretty strong example I saw recently (linked to timestamp): In case anyone is allergic to clicking and watching things, if you take this image: and then apply green under her eyes and magenta on her nose it essentially ruins her skin-tones: but guess what - if we apply a film look then those variations in her skin tones that looked awful are mostly eliminated: This is because the film look compresses the green/magenta axis in the image.. before: after: This is a pretty simple colour grading trick. Any half-decent colourist can do this without thinking about it too much, and most LUTs already have this kind of thing built in. Notice that this was all done in post, and didn't rely on the camera at all?

https://www.newsshooter.com/2024/04/15/deity-releases-dxtx-plug-in-transmitter-that-records-32-bit-float-and-transmits-simultaneously/ On paper this is exactly what I want. 32 bit float in a single channel plug on recorder, with batteries that can be replaced on set. And it integrates with their TC system! I've definitely grumbled about closed TC systems, but at least this one connects to everything without extra boxes. Unlike UltraSync blue requiring a separate box just to output LTC. I'll wait for real world reviews and audio samples, but the DXTX looks like it will vastly simplify a boom setup for me. The one design choice that seems pretty odd is that there is no headphone output. Looks like the only way to monitor this thing is with a THEOS receiver, which would be unfortunate. It would be nice if it were a standalone field recorder that you could use with just a mic and no other gear, or if it could be mounted on a mirrorless camera as the XLR adapter. Though in fairness, neither of those are the primary use case that I am excited to apply it towards.

I agree that this is a huge market and definitely where Nikon should focus their attention, and an N-line of cameras would be a good way to do that, especially if it took advantage of the tech that RED has. This doesn't really have much to do with RED making products for Hollywood though - that's a different brand making different products for a different market. Mass-market car companies do this all the time. They use their tonnes of cash to buy an unprofitable sports-car company and get their techs to work on making hot hatchback versions of their cars, and perhaps a new premium line of sports cars under the mass-market brand, but they also help the sports-car brand to improve quality control and keep on making new models. They don't just close down the sports-car brand. Virtually all sports-car brands are owned by another manufacturer that makes family cars.

This is true. However, people are also trying to share their experience with you. For example, if you said that you were hammering in nails with your camera and it was really damaging the camera and you asked how to make the camera tougher, people would reply telling you to buy a hammer. Is this answering the question? No. Are people trying to help you? Absolutely. You have asked a series of questions over the last month or so about technical aspects of cameras that don't have any relevance to real-world shooting except in very very specific scenarios, and when people reply you haven't given any information suggesting that you actually face these scenarios in your own work, you just seem to want to discuss things like these real-world considerations don't actually exist. For example - do you know what the best ways are to get great skin tones? Shoot someone with great skin tones Shoot someone with good skin tones and good makeup Shoot someone with not terrible skin tones and really good makeup Shoot someone with great makeup Shoot someone with good skin tones and ok makeup and do digital retouching in post Shoot someone with not terrible skin tones and good makeup and do good digital retouching in post Shoot someone with ok makeup and do really great digital retouching in post Notice that the camera didn't factor into that equation? I'm sure that you understand that make-up is a pretty big deal on a movie set, but you might not be aware of how much work goes into skin tones and retouching in post. They say that getting the skin tones right is about half of all colour grading effort. Here's a video showing the state-of-the-art tools that are dedicated to this - these tools wouldn't exist if there wasn't demand for it...... this is the tools in Baselight which is the main Resolve competitor.

More than $1k if you buy used. I saw one for <2k and almost got it, but that was when I was still waiting to see what BM would announce. I actually prefer the non-pro even for the same price because NP batteries are better for me. I use the app for monitoring so I don't want the monitor and don't need SDI. BNC timecode and more F buttons would be nice, though. IIRC F6 low jello is a crop mode, right? On the M4 it was a separate full sensor readout with considerably more noise. I rarely used it because it hurt the image too much--that MFT sensor definitely had no DR or noise to spare.

It does, although as an owner of the current Micro panel I won't be rushing out to buy it. TBH, the panels have a bit of a controversy around them because BM seems to stop short of making them fully-featured. The feedback I hear from colourists is that the Mini is the best one because it has the buttons for controlling OFX plugins etc that the Micro doesn't, but users of both the Mini and Advanced panels frequently say that there are little things that aren't on the panels and BM refuses to make them customisable, so users have to keep a keyboard or mouse or tablet handy on the desk for just one or two frequent operations. In this sense, BM are like Apple - you do things their way and it's take-it-or-leave-it. To a certain degree the lack of customisation on the panels reflects the lack of more advanced features being built into Resolve, which means that people have to put together custom workflows with nodes in strange configurations etc, which of course aren't easily usable from the panels because the panels aren't customisable - even the Advanced panel at ~$28,000. I see quite a number of grading suite setups with a tablet as the main item directly in front of the user, then a panel behind that. Personally, I've tried to colour directly from the panel but the limitations in terms of what Resolve comes with has lead me away from it and to even develop my own custom tools.

And the E2-F6 Pro is even closer to what is described since it has a removable integrated screen with controls and SDI for lower-latency monitoring - not sure it's worth the extra $1000 to me, though. 😛 As for faster readout on the E2-F6, if you're willing to sacrifice around a stop of dynamic range, there's a low jello mode (though I can't remember what limits there are on using it - it may not be available in all resolutions/frame rates). I've never found the F6 jello too objectionable so I never bothered turning it on to figure out how much it helps.

Yep, but there's some precedent. Canon made a serious attempt at these pros with the C-Line. It's trying to do so and seems profitable. But the REAL market is the digital crowd using pro-equipment but posting their content exclusively on social media. Nikon wants a piece of that delicious pie. Their new products could be very un-camera like and cater to this new video market and maybe they'll even catch one or two pros in the process.

That seems possible to the very niche video guys, but I highly doubt it. Again, it's a cultural thing. Neither Canon nor Nikon are big supporters of fragmentation. They are vertical and hierarchy plays a BIG role.

I've never used AF. Most shoots there are 2 people on camera, so someone pulls focus with a wireless unit. And I can pull focus for myself if not. Any log format that is supported by Resolve's color is ideal. I haven't used everything out there so I'm not going to try to give brand generalizations. Honestly the NX1 was the camera that gave me the best results SOOC, but I can't recommend a discontinued series from 10 years ago. The S5 works really well for me now. The XT3 was great, but if I recall correctly there were issues with FLog in Resolve for a while, so I almost always used HLG and was happy with it. I haven't shot with any modern blackmagic cameras, but I from what I see in other people's footage, they have the best color with their end-to-end color management. Again, that's not personal experience. If you need to get good Rec709 color SOOC I'm not the best reference, as everything I've ever shot has had time for coloring. Another factor that maybe I should state explicitly is that Resolve is the only color software that I like. Assuming you're using a decently nice camera with color management, good software will speed up the color process more than the difference between Sony FX6 and Canon C70.

Agreed between them and canon for me. How do you deal with AF issues on Fuji? This is exactly my point. What SOOC or fastest post workflow brand do you like ?

Yes, 10 bit log is extremely flexible, so you can get similar color from most modern cameras. I say modern because sensors are better now than they used to be. My one extra note is that I find that the most important thing is to nail your white balance. Many cameras that I have used look way better if you manually set them to a white balance setting, rather than balance to a card. My Panasonic S5 in particular looks terrible balanced to a card. So I always shoot 5600K and correct it later. If you do correct it in post, it's best to use color management and do the corrections in linear gamma. If I recall, my old NX1 actually looked great balanced to a the same white card. So it definitely varies by camera. I love Fuji's color. I'm not overjoyed by Panasonic's SOOC Rec709 (but am happy with VLog when I have at least 2 minutes to color it). But in a broad sense and with possible exceptions, I am happy with any camera made after 2018 that cost more than $2k at launch. I really disliked older Sonys and Panasonics, but that is no longer true. Speaking specifically about color, being able to use Resolve color management is huge. It is faster and better than using LUTs to move between color spaces. Other than that, the only real consideration is the time/quality ratio. How fast can I get to the image I want, or, on the other end, how fast can I get to an image that can be turned in by the deadline. Like you mentioned in your first sentence, images can be made similar, but the question is how quickly. Speaking about the entire system, compatibility is my #1 concern. Lenses, batteries, audio, rigs--these all have to work together. I've put a lot of effort into things like "put a right angle XLR on the bottom of a boom pole so that it can be set down without damaging the cable." All my lenses are EF. All of them have 77mm filter threads. That sort of thing matters a lot. Typically, I will do plenty of tests ahead of time. I'll build color nodes in Resolve before the project begins, so I know what settings to use on set, and roughly what I'll do in post. If you have that kind of preparation, the camera used does not matter as much. I think 10 years ago, Canon reigned. The 5D3 was much better than Panasonics and Sonys back then. Nowadays I don't think it holds anymore. But that's all subjective.

For some posts and comments I notice many respond not to the original post or thread but their own concerns or issues. I’m not sure how to course correct this.

My thoughts exactly. Actually, all I want is a Z Cam E2-F6 with faster readout, and if I'm really making wishes then I want Resolve to include Zlog2 color management. Other than that, the F6 is my perfect camera, because it sort of has what you describe: a tiny menu screen, builtin low latency USB/Wifi monitoring, and plenty of 1/4-20's.

I agree - especially the last point. SRV1981 - 'Content is King'. Without decent, interesting content your audience is not going to care about image quality differences because they've stopped watching the movie. If the content is good, they won't be noticing the quality differences because they're engrossed in the story instead. As an example, I recently posted a video on my (niche, railfan orientated) YT channel using content I recorded 20-25 years ago on 720x576, 50i DV tape-based camcorders. The picture quality is terrible by today's standards (it's noisy, low resolution, has bad colour bleed, poor DR etc.). But the historical content, getting the most out of the ambient sound and keeping the editing reasonably fast-paced seems to have been popular and it's had over 500 views in 4 weeks. Which is pretty good for my channel. I've got other videos on the channel that I thought looked pretty good and were shot in 4k but have only had 60 views in a year... Below is a still from the editor timeline - note the burnt-out sky, the purple fringing along edge of the canopy, the over-saturated orange patch turning into red, the jaggies on the diagonals and the lack of resolution (and typical western Ireland wet weather!). No pixel-peeping needed to spot the technical defects 🙂

I hope they enable using the 6K Pocket EVF with the USB-C EVF port. From what I've seen it connects to the Pockets with USB anyways. Would be a nice affordable alternative to the new EVF. A side screen for menus/settings is fine, but having it be 4" seems unnecessary, at least if the body is bigger than it has to be to accommodate it. Hopefully there is a way to easily switch it on/off so it's not sucking battery all the time. I'd much prefer the camera be cheaper and smaller, with maybe a 2" screen for menus, and then they sell a separate 4" monitor with some buttons on it (like a C200 or FS/FX screen), with some 1/4-20's for mounting hardware, that connects to that USB-C EVF port. Or maybe leave the buttons off so it can be cheaper, then refresh the Video Assists and let them have the controls. The new Micro Panel looks nice.

If the R5 II is exactly like the R5, but with better cooling and dynamic range (dare we dream of DGO?) and it's about the same price, I will almost certainly trade in my R5 toward one. I'd ask for timecode too, but I'm sure they'll hold that out for the R5C II.

Exactly. 10gE is only 1.2 gigabytes per second. The CF Express card in a reader can do more than 2 gigabytes per second. If you run 25gE (about 3 gigabytes/second), you'll probably be able to keep up with a single CF Express card. With 100gE, you can do 12.5 gigabytes/second, optimally, but I'm willing to bet you'll find that there are weird limitations in the software stack that prevent you from getting close to that - at least over SMB or similar. You could also do multiple interfaces in the server and make sure that SMB multichannel is enabled on the client and the server. I haven't tested it, but in theory, newer versions of Windows (and Samba) support it. At this moment, I don't feel any need to optimize beyond having 10gE for my stuff. I guess if I cared that much about getting the fastest possible offload, I could just carry the card/reader into the basement and direct connect them to my server. Even on shoots where we're running two cameras and shooting raw, I don't think I've ever generated more than about 1.5T in a day. Offloading it over 10gE takes about half an hour when I get home. That's about as long as it takes me to carry all the gear from my car into the house. So my perspective is clearly not that of a high-budget production. 😛