ND64

Let's take a moment to appreciate the old treasure that is the Nikon Z6 OG, which couldn't have aged better even if it were deposited in an oak barrel in Scotland for the past 6 years.

First of all it is £650 now.
Secondly of course it is full frame whereas a lot of the other options for this price are crop sensor.
Many of the other mirrorless full frame cameras have aged quite badly. The Panasonic S1 is superseded by a smaller cheaper camera with better AF. The Canon EOS R classic has been superseded twice by the R6 and R6 II. The formula of Z6 on the other hand has only merely been tweaked with the Z6 II that doesn't add a huge amount extra, because it just doesn't need to.
And the Z8 / Z9 are insanely more money than £650.
I like that it has such nice colour science out the box. It also has better custom picture profile management than Canon.
The IBIS is superior to the Canon EOS R3 in every way, let alone the EOS R5 or R6 II.
The 4K video and 6K sensor is superb in low light, better than the 8K+ stuff.
And despite now being very cheap the top LCD and enormous, detailed EVF hold up very favourably today, in fact the EVF competes with some of the best even in 2024.
The ergonomics are excellent, it doesn't put a foot wrong in terms of what it tries to do. And what it doesn't do, you probably don't need. OK, so there's no 4K/60p, or faster stacked sensor, and 120fps is limited to 1080p, but everything feels fast and responsive, including the on-sensor phase-detect AF.
It is much smaller and lighter than the Panasonic S1 or S1H, yet with phase-detect AF and a very similar sensor under the hood.
Z mount has also ripened well... It has a really good line up of lenses and adapters now, including the nifty Leica M mount autofocus adapter which will turn every manual focus lens into a fast and snappy autofocus optic.
Plus it's the only mirrorless mount that adapts to Sony E!
So you can put your native Sony mirrorless lenses on there and everything works.
I can't think of a better deal for £650 at the moment on the used market for cameras.
Curious to hear other opinions and what's changed in Nikon land since it came out those long 6 years ago in 2018.
I can't for the life of me think of another 6 year old camera that has aged this well.

Just watched the Gerald piece.
Brands have been pursuing the same format for launches on social media for many years, but maybe they have now jumped the shark. It's becoming easier and easier to see who is in the preferred circle of manufacturer mouthpieces and who isn't, and therefore what's not objective and what is just a sales pitch and straight forward shilling.
It has undermined the internet and social media so much, that it's starting to become a turn off for even the most unassuming consumers and customers.
We on this forum of course spotted it coming a mile ago, and I think we know how to not get sucked into the hype and just focus on the objective info that comes out of these videos.... although to be honest, usually most of that fits on the back of an envelope even after a 20 minute viewing session.
I've been to a few launches myself and it does absolutely on a personal level make it very uncomfortable and embarrassing to come back home afterwards and then be truly critical to an audience of thousands, it feels like kicking a lot of nice camera company people in the teeth. You will lose that access as a journalist (as I have). You might even be bullied into a non-disparagement agreement as was the case with me and a certain Mr Jannard at RED or made persona-non-grata without future access to pre-release hardware as was the case with Sony and now also Panasonic as well.
The question for me with Gerald is whether he is truly concerned about any of this, or whether he is being hypocritical. I am assuming the latter given the very close relationship he has maintained with nearly all the major PR agencies and camera manufacturers in our industry for years without ever raising these kinds of conflict of interest and objectivity issues until many years later, i.e. now, and even then, purely because he's butt hurt about not being invited on a fancy trip to Tokyo.
On the other hand, props to Gerald for being one of the few Canadian YouTubers who aren't born salesmen / Camera store duo *cough cough*.
It makes perfect sense for the camera manufacturers of course to nurture the next generation of salesman by bringing them to the fore on YouTube, rather than nurturing filmmakers, real reviewers and journalists who can say troublesome things like me.
Some of the key moments for me...
"Why now, why Lumix launch"... I think it's because he wasn't invited. Otherwise, he would have done a video like this about 8 years ago after a Sony launch or a Canon launch. Because the same thing has been going on since about 2012 and the ramp up in YouTube & social media hype of consumer brands.
"I'm just sitting at home reading the reviews"... This is him painting himself as a casual observer, and therefore an objective one.
"Didn't get invited to the S5 II launch in Japan, didn't get invited to S9 launch, because I was critical of GH6"... Exactly, but had he been invited to those - would he still be putting his superman cape on and making a video like this? Nope.
Because in the end he has always been 100% happy to benefit from early access and press trips when it suited him, the sanctimonious bastard.
Sorry... not very polite of me, but then I aint Canadian.

What I understand now is that working with these YouTubers is extremely hard and I feel sorry for marketing people of camera brands who have to work with them.

What I understand now is that working with these YouTubers is extremely hard and I feel sorry for marketing people of camera brands who have to work with them.

What I understand now is that working with these YouTubers is extremely hard and I feel sorry for marketing people of camera brands who have to work with them.

What I understand now is that working with these YouTubers is extremely hard and I feel sorry for marketing people of camera brands who have to work with them.

The price is revealed. $85 million.
 

Was this guy responsible for the genius idea of putting a CFE card inside Red mini mag and charge 10x? 

Was this guy responsible for the genius idea of putting a CFE card inside Red mini mag and charge 10x? 

Was this guy responsible for the genius idea of putting a CFE card inside Red mini mag and charge 10x? 

Was this guy responsible for the genius idea of putting a CFE card inside Red mini mag and charge 10x? 

Was this guy responsible for the genius idea of putting a CFE card inside Red mini mag and charge 10x? 

The reality is if you lift the shadows in both Z9 and A1 "uncompressed" raw images, at base ISO, you get different results. If you do demosaicing on A1 images, and apply temporal NR, you get even more different result. If Nikon ditch the NRAW, its probably related to license costs, not the quality of the codec.

The reality is if you lift the shadows in both Z9 and A1 "uncompressed" raw images, at base ISO, you get different results. If you do demosaicing on A1 images, and apply temporal NR, you get even more different result. If Nikon ditch the NRAW, its probably related to license costs, not the quality of the codec.

For comparing two different codecs, you have to use the same or similar sensors.

I really want to "own nothing and be happy" but I'm not sure about the second half of that sentence. 

New but not unexpected rumors:
- The Nikon Z6III camera announcement may have something to do with the RED acquisition.
- We should expect some kind of a Nikon/RED announcement at the 2024 NAB show next month (maybe the Z6III?).
-----
I still think its too early for any RED+Nikon development, but Expeed7 doing R3D is the lowest hanging fruit. 

Nikon is going to release a Komodo competitor next month: Z6m3 with 6k30p raw 😄

I'm not sure pixel shield PDAF IP is totally owned by Sony, since Nikon has a lot of patents related to that technique. Of course many cross licencing is happening in this industry. Dual gain was invented by Aptina, now part of ONsemi, which doesn't provide sensor for any of Japanese ILC makers, but everybody is using the tech. However if they want to add AF capabilities to RED, I don't think they would use pixel shield technique, cause it degrades image quality a little bit (the shielded pixel has lower S/N ratio than the rest of the pixels). Dual pixel and quad pixel is the way to go. Nikon has some interesting patents about that too. People put too much emphasis on sensor license fees. The fees are not really a big deal. The fab costs is. 

This acquisition caused some discoveries:
1- Some RED users are not mentally well. I mean who on earth glue a camera, which is a tool, to his entire identity? Its insane when you think about that. It may sound judgmental but I feel few of these guys are even closet antivaxxer.
2- People in video making echo chamber have no clue about still camera industry. Example one: they don't know how popular Z8 is. Example two: they don't know a big part of Canon market share is related to its strategy of sticking to the old habit of making cheap cripple hammered bodies. Example three: they don't know how much Nikon is involved in CMOS sensor development. 
3- Making "analysis" video about a corporate deal, with almost zero published details, is so easy for some of these YouTubers, that seems "Trust me bro" is not a meme anymore, but a serious way of life! 

Its too soon for a collaborative work. But all they have to do, for now, is add REDCODE and active cooling to upcoming Z6III, and call it RED Phoenix or something, with $3k price.
 
Having Nraw didn't prevent them to include ProresRAW in Z9. Unless REDCODE needs higher processing power Expeed 7 can't provide.

Bigger than Apple? Although they didn't try hard. 

Nikon owns The Bolt robot, and now RED. Next should be Aputure 🙂

The updated list:
- 6k60 NRAW, 4k120 (crop), 4k60 full ProRes RAW
- New higher resolution EVF: 5.76m dot
- Improved LCD
- 20fps still RAW (14bit)
- 120fps stills jpeg
- 1/16000 shutter speed
- 299 points AF
- 8-stop VR (same system as the Nikon Zf)
- CFexpress+SD memory cards
- PSAM Dial
- Camera body size and overall dimension are similar to the Nikon Z6II: 3-5mm longer width becuase of the LCD hinge and a few mm thicker
- The overall height (bottom to the EVF) remains the same but the actual camera is 2-3mm taller
- The grip button layouts and design look similar to the Nikon Z8 apart from the command dial which is the same as the Z6II
--------
 

Expeed 7 can easily handle these specs, the question is the sensor. With smaller market of ILCs, they can't fab a new sensor every couple of years.