ND64

Didn't know A7siii has this saturation issue

Pixel binned raw 4k120 of ZR has the same amount of details of FX3, if not more, which is a native 4k sensor

 

I like this way of marketing to give the camera to youtubers with low number followers and turns out they're talented and need more recognition.
 

I like this way of marketing to give the camera to youtubers with low number followers and turns out they're talented and need more recognition.
 

Pixel binned raw 4k120 of ZR has the same amount of details of FX3, if not more, which is a native 4k sensor

 

I understand. On the other hand, they could just call it Panasonic Pro Services and it would be completely seamless.
I can’t help but feel there’s something going on behind the scenes, though. You’re right — moving from Lumix Pro Services to My Panasonic just doesn’t make sense from a user’s perspective, at least in my opinion. I smell a rat — the whole thing feels a bit fishy.

This name screams "consumer". You just don't replace "pro" with "my" if you're targeting professional shooters. But nothing is impossible with Panasonic marketing team. However ditching Lumix brand is bigger mistake. Unlike Canon/Nikon and even Sony, their customer base are 80% video 20% still users, and all of them call their cameras Lumix.
But marketing aside, they're facing a economic challenge they exacerbated themselves with not being fully committed to low budget segment of the market. The reality is pro folks don't upgrade their tools very often. You need enthusiasts/younger generations to keep the cash flow. But they just updating the high end full frame cameras. M4/3 is perceived as dead. L mount APSC is nowhere to be seen. LX compact in GX7 resurrection era? None. 

Pixel binned raw 4k120 of ZR has the same amount of details of FX3, if not more, which is a native 4k sensor

 

Its equivalent of Nikon and Canon announce they are closing down their NPS and CPS service. Sport shooters, photo journalists, news agencies, would panic. But Panasonic has no dog in that fight, and probably just gave up. 

Finally got ZR yesterday. After changing all the settings like I have them in Z6iii, except Zebras and Vignette for R3D, got to test it a bit too.
1st, the screen is really good, you can change almost everything needed via the touch id and new menus quite quickly and intuitively. Need to figure out still what I need to set on those 4 custom buttons really.
The grip is tiny but feels ok in the hand. Still, with heavier lenses like 1kg 50 f1.2 and 135 f1.8 having the L shaped gage’s bigger grip seems to be a must, as it also has the Arca-swizz base plate for easy tripod use too. 
Quickly tested R3D NE vs NRaw to R3D hack with ISO 800 and 6400, and R3D NE was a bit cleaner in the shadows and seemed to hold the colors better too. 
The Z6iii EVF and all of it’s buttons in muscle memory seems still of course more convenient to use, but there is no going back to timy 3.2” screens after this. In various Panas and Z6iii I almost never used the screen.
Cinema tools has made a false color LUT, propably have to buy and try that too, if setting the zebras to 245 for R3D highlights does not work like zebras at 255 for NRaw.
The build quality seemed robust, but the shutter button needs a bit heavier press. Could not find the focus limiter in the menus either. Hopefully the weather allows to take both ZR and Z6iii outside, and see how the ZR handles, and what the footage looks like.
 

I found a false color LUT for ZR in a chinese forum. It was on a Chinese cloud host unavailable for foreigners, so I got it and uploaded to jotta:
https://jottacloud.com/s/433167a024c75694baa94438259ee5d1b8e

I have been a pro photographer for 20 years now and live in a tropical island with lighting ratios you can't even imagine in most countries. This is why I have been always very sensible to Dynamic range result/progress/testing for the last two decades, as most of the population including me are darker skin and we have very hard light. During that time I saw the first digital cameras (I would say from 2 to 3rd generation) depending on how you count, go from about 10 to 14-15 (SNR) DR test in RAW, as contrary to most videographers, photographers been shooting in raw for decades. I have seen what a 10 stops DR camera image look like and my ZR is no way as bad as this. Last week I had to film some B rolls for the launching of an international car brand here, where we had to mix some of our country shots with their own media. And as I had little time, I had to go around and shoot in less ideal conditions with harsh middle day shoot and some with harsh backlight and I had to dig deep into the shadows. This is start of the summer in the southern hemisphere, so the light was already hard even not quite as from December to March. 
So to come back to CineD, I have enough experience to know their numbers/conclusion are just BS. In fact they are some of the reference that have educated me, mostly with the latitude test, which I consider the best test today. But when you take RAW numbers and pit it against mostly compress/NR based codec, guess what, it is disingenuous. Because if you had watched DR test for the last decade with Xyla charts and Imatest, you would know that Raw data tend to score much less because of noise, but in that noise is still a ton of Data. Gerald Undone who is himself not a Nikon Fan, does the explanation very well in the ZR dynamic range test. First he got 10.9 stops at 0.5 medium noise rating, which strangely jumps just a little bit to 11.1 on a normalized 4k timeline, and just adding a little NR, where as he says the details in the shadows are still very high he reaches 12.6. This is in the RED Komodo X range. I have seen other test from french (I am a french Speaker) to even Korean which were around same numbers and which corelate with multiple side by side test. And no way their are 2.5 stops difference between the KX and the ZR!!! But it is not the first time I see them cooking their numbers to support some kind of narative. But this time it was the exact opposite for the Sony A9iii. The one with the Global shutter that even with your eyes could see with a bad DR, but I remenber the guy putting so much NR to get 9STOPS of exposure latitude, to say it had great latitude. Yes it is a 1080p image, but doesn't mean it has 1080p details, which I pointed in the comments.

Thom Hogan:
"Nowhere in Panasonic's press releases or marketing information I've seen so far do they actually seem to know how to market their six different 24mp cameras (S1II, S1IIE, S5II, S5IIX, S9, and BS1H). In the S1IIE features list the sensor is listed as "inspired by the performance characteristics of the Lumix S5II," which tells you nothing. Those of us in the press these days are dealing with AI driven press releases, but I'm failing to even see the I in Panasonic's. Nothing tells me which 24mp camera to buy, let alone why I should buy it instead of Canon's, Nikon's, or Sony's. This feels like "stuff the channel and see if it sells" product management, not clear, user centric marketing."

The best test so far
 

No. For now its only Flexible Picture Controls. 
 
Yes, but only with non NLOG profiles, like Flat and Standard. NLOG has a bug, or they deliberately added more NR with log profile. With YouTube compression, its not noticeable tho.
You can just wait to see how the firmware update turns out. 

The best test so far
 

The best test so far
 

You sure its Alexa?
Here is ZR 4k120 in super35 crop for comparison 


 

The best test so far
 

People are using Z5ii, a $1700 camera, to shoot raw video, with changing extension hack. 4k30p, 450mb/s on SD. Yea its soft, but its filmic soft.

I like this approach when I don't want to deal with massive files.

Optyczne published their review:
https://www.optyczne.pl/107.4-Inne_testy-Nikon_ZR_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Jakość_obrazu.html

Optyczne published their review:
https://www.optyczne.pl/107.4-Inne_testy-Nikon_ZR_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Jakość_obrazu.html

For anyone who knows one or two things about imaging science, it was obvious we can't go beyond 16 stops with current combinations of tech, as DR is not just about pixel's saturation. You can save harsh highlights from clipping but you get an overall contrast level that doesn't match to that saved highlights, which is what exactly demonstrated here.

At ISO 6400, ZR is way better than Komodo X, and equal to S1ii. With noise reduction, even ISO 25600 is useable. And thats what matters for the target market. They're mostly one man with no or very limited lighting equipment. Underexposing and lifting the shadows in post is not what they usually do. Its good to have lower noise floor, but you don't want to go much down there anyway. Because despite less noise, you're still dealing with poor SN ratio, due to shot noise, which is inevitable side effect of underexposure. That's why much of R&D money in CMOS sensor industry is directed to improvement in saturation level (more room for overexposure), and solve the noise problem with AI. 

Thats with today storage technology and prices. 20 years ago, CompactFlash was expensive and one of the reasons people complained about raw. That's why they were insisting that 12 megapixels is enough and 24mp is unnecessary huge!