ND64

It's the best compact cine camera in the market, for NOW. But I'm not sure it can hold that position for long. Maybe they know this and keeping some features unavailable today to be unlocked at 2027. Firmware update these days are more a marketing policy (our product still competes) than an engineering challenge. I mean 4k240 is not some issue in the code you want to resolve. Its a switch. 

Voigtländer made a 90 mm f/3.5 Apo Lanthar for DSLRs. Nikon made a series E 100 mm f/2.8 that is very compact. I think most people today prefer to use zooms for landscape photography. Short tele lenses of smaller maximum apertures typically have some close-up capability or even may be optimized primarily for close-ups. I believe for the most part, manufacturers follow sales and make their product lineups based on sales data combined with estimated future demand. Often users just have to adapt to what is available if they want to use new lenses. Even popular lenses can be neglected or discontinued if the manufacturer wants to promote something new.
 
One issue with non-macro primes of smaller apertures is that manufacturers find it easier to market product lineups where there is a clear line of progression from one level of product upwards to the mid-level and top-of-the-line, and every parameter of performance should improve along the way. This means that although it would be easier to make smaller-aperture lenses better optically than large-aperture lenses of corresponding focal lengths, the manufacturers will make every effort to make the reverse true and the larger-aperture lenses better in image quality, focus speed, etc. and sometimes this means the smaller aperture lenses don't get all the quality they could have. This is unfortunate as I believe there is significant demand for compact, very high quality lenses.

"Old look" has a similar function to "film look". Both separates the content from reality by not being accurate. Modern camera are capable of representing the real world as it is, like they're just mirrors. But the artist wants to make a dream for the audience. You don't perceive a mirror image as a dream. 

I was just wondering if it would make any difference, doing it before or after, but I think I don't know enough about how the debayering is actually done.
I suppose that if manufacturers don't share the spectral responses of the channels then no-one can know what the primaries are, so although they'll know the gamma is Linear they won't know the colour space.  Therefore if they want to make the image more warm along the neutral axis, they'll be boosting red and green but won't know the correct proportions to move along the right vector (unless they do some testing to determine this).
I guess it's a situation where you have all the usual suspects feeding into it, like corporate secrecy and paranoia (in the guise of "competitive advantage") and poor understanding of transparency and the benefits of open standards, but also poor business management and inability to understand how the customer experiences their products.  Industrial espionage is also something that happens and there's a balance between being transparent and making it easy for your competitors to undercut you in the market.
I think for ARRI the marketplace might be somewhat different, but perhaps not.  Then again, ARRI got sold and not all the Japanese manufacturers needed to be put on the market, so maybe their curmudgeonly ways paid off...

WB should be before any creative operation, but before debayering is another story. Some still camera makers did that to make an "agreeable base point" for raw development softwares so they don't mess up with the brand's "image look" when they're doing their own WB process. Some differences in rendering we got used to see between LR and C1 is caused by the fact that there is very little communication between Japan and these software vendors. Some things like sharing the data of spectral response of the sensor with them. So instead of being more open, they place some pre scaling in the raw as baked in process. This practice makes less sense for Arri as they have a very good communication with software industry. But what do I know.

Interesting that WB is placed before De-bayer. Photographers call it "white balance scaling" and prefer it not to be done by manufacturer, since its digitally boosting channels, which is irreversible process. After all its not like all things they're doing is science. Some decisions are just an engineer thinking its the best compromise. 

Interesting that WB is placed before De-bayer. Photographers call it "white balance scaling" and prefer it not to be done by manufacturer, since its digitally boosting channels, which is irreversible process. After all its not like all things they're doing is science. Some decisions are just an engineer thinking its the best compromise. 

Some of Nikon's portrait F mount lenses do the same. They deliberately let the red light doesn't hit the same plane as blue/green. As like not-much-corrected glasses of the old days. So red is a bit out of focus. Very very tiny amount. Tho that amount changes with focus distance. They usually optimize for portrait distances. They abandoned that approach with Z mount lenses. 

Some of Nikon's portrait F mount lenses do the same. They deliberately let the red light doesn't hit the same plane as blue/green. As like not-much-corrected glasses of the old days. So red is a bit out of focus. Very very tiny amount. Tho that amount changes with focus distance. They usually optimize for portrait distances. They abandoned that approach with Z mount lenses. 

When I was learning calligraphy, an Arabic one, wich is very hard to learn and needs a specialized pen, my mentor used to say to us "an artist can write perfectly even with matchsticks, don't be obsessed with pens". Later on I realized he has an expensive collection of pens, from cheap ones to exotic ones, old and new, and in all possible sizes. He wasn't obsessed with gear. You could give him a philips screwdriver and leftover construction paint and he could manage to write a poem with that on a wooden pallet. But he also had a passion for gears, because pen is something that connects him to the art he loves. 

And now the ZRc:

Fourth quarter of 2026 is too late, or something lost in translation. Z30/Z50II sensor at that point is lame. No IBIS is shame, and 4k60 with crop on APSC is unacceptable. But why its not Z30II? Doesn't make sense.

Somebody discovered the h.265 softness issue is a variable bitrate bug. With Nlog its too low. It should be 320Mb/s but its 32Mb/s. They forgot a zero 🙂

One of them leaked the script of Witkoff's negotiations with the Russian guy. Another one, an admiral, questioned orders and forced to resign. The problem is there won't be enough of them, because unlike Hollywood scenarios, you need more than few heros to save the country from fascists, it needs uprising by millions of people (tho I don't believe these clowns are fascist. They're too dumb to stick with a particular ideology).

Nikon ZR vs Arri Alexa Mini Color (R3D NE, N-Log, Log C)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgJGK3YpIx0 
 

They're already closing down their pro services, and no way they invest in a zero growth business when they kill their own zero growth businesses.
Canon can't do it. That would be all against their ego. They and their customer base believe Canon color science is best in the world, and thats why they have 50% market share. They're like "we ain't need nobody". 
Sony will have a integration nightmare if they do it. Arri systems are in conflict with the whole Sony line up. Also it would be an official admission that the electronics/AV giant couldn't get the color science right and eventually had to go shopping.
Nikon acquisition of RED unintentionally made this perception that its a preferred approach in Tokyo. But it isn't. Nikon had to choose between two costly options and the acquisition was cheaper.
In China, its only DJI who can gain a lot with Arri reputation in its arsenal, but I don't think Germans are comfortable with giving away this German icon to Chinese.
Zeiss would be the perfect owner. A German brand with enough money, so the brand stays in the country, and they're heavily invested in high end part of the cine market. 

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

For comparison its his ZR test

At 0.1 High S/N ratio, DR is 6 stops. In his R6III test its only 3. Not only he is not curious at all why its so low, but doesn't even notice the drastic fall of it (from 8.26 to 3.04). As a reviewer I would dig into the data.
I seriously feel he's not interested about what he's doing anymore. He's like "AF is good". What? How you tested that? Where is the evidence that its good? Canon website says its good, what else you know? And good for who? and why people should pay near $3k to have "good AF" when their current camera already has good AF? I assume R6III AF is "better" than R6II, but I need to see the evidence in practical situations. That's the job of someone who reviews gears for living.

For comparison its his ZR test

At 0.1 High S/N ratio, DR is 6 stops. In his R6III test its only 3. Not only he is not curious at all why its so low, but doesn't even notice the drastic fall of it (from 8.26 to 3.04). As a reviewer I would dig into the data.
I seriously feel he's not interested about what he's doing anymore. He's like "AF is good". What? How you tested that? Where is the evidence that its good? Canon website says its good, what else you know? And good for who? and why people should pay near $3k to have "good AF" when their current camera already has good AF? I assume R6III AF is "better" than R6II, but I need to see the evidence in practical situations. That's the job of someone who reviews gears for living.

For comparison its his ZR test

At 0.1 High S/N ratio, DR is 6 stops. In his R6III test its only 3. Not only he is not curious at all why its so low, but doesn't even notice the drastic fall of it (from 8.26 to 3.04). As a reviewer I would dig into the data.
I seriously feel he's not interested about what he's doing anymore. He's like "AF is good". What? How you tested that? Where is the evidence that its good? Canon website says its good, what else you know? And good for who? and why people should pay near $3k to have "good AF" when their current camera already has good AF? I assume R6III AF is "better" than R6II, but I need to see the evidence in practical situations. That's the job of someone who reviews gears for living.

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

I wish someone in Nikon or RED explain what they did and what these codes actually do. NRAW show less purple noise at extreme underexposure but colors are all over the place. R3D NE is in a pool of purple noise, but colors are intact. 

People fight over who has closer DR and latitude to Alexa 35, then apply a LUT that drops the DR to 6 stops to look like Heat 1995.

For now as a Nikon shooter, I am more inclined to shoot NRAW and do the renaming trick to R3D, than to shoot R3D as I am finding that the Nraw has more DR than the R3D and you can shoot the normal version that takes only about 370 mbs for 24 fps in 4k and 700 mbs for 6k. This is a little test of conversion of Nev to R3D. You have NEV (Nikon RAw), NEV but using the RED lut, Then the Nev to R3D renaming and finally the REDraw file. then  So I need to make a little bit more test, with skin tones etc, but they are quite close to me, even more so that even between the different red cameras like the Raptor and Komodo, their is some color difference. The yellow are a little bit more saturated and the image is a little more toward yellow in the Nikon ZR redraw R3D files. On side by side test the ZR was the more yellowish of the red camera. So it might balance out in the end.