Emanuel

well after a day of cutting z8 and mavic 3 footage, I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing. I stumbled on some phantom 4 pro stuff I shot a few year ago and honestly its less noisy, has better highlight rolloff, but most of all it was quicker: That's the thing I'm increasingly thinking. Maybe I can improve on what I was doing 3 years ago, but only a bit, if at all, and at what time cost? If I have to denoise every shot, and mask windows to try to squeak some highlights in from outside, for a marginal improvement in a sector where I'm competing with people charging $200 and shooting on an iphone. I've seen some of the HDR iphone footage and its pretty amazing.   

As others have stated the AI/computational stuff you get from phones, drones etc shouldn't be compared to what you're getting raw from a mirrorless cam. It's definitely going to take more work in post and more effort during shooting to get there.
FYI Z9 recently got a 4.0 FW update that adds a low (100) ISO mode to N-log. Early reports suggest noise is gone. This firmware should be coming very soon to Z8 and hopefully be a bit of a game changer when it comes to noise issues with N-log.

IBIS with non-CPU lenses works if you type in the focal length and maximum aperture into the list of non-CPU lenses that you use. This includes mechanical-only lenses that don't have electrical contacts.
 
https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/z8/en/sum_non-cpu_lens_data_guid-fac0444d-3965-c25a-4c18-84574cb10167_285.html
 
After typing in the data for the non-CPU lenses, you can then select from the list the actual one that you are using and the data is recalled. This can be programmed to a custom function button.
 
The AF speed in video recording is adjustable:
https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/z8/en/csmg_af_speed_guid-a4c4cd1b-0ad3-5c90-eac7-5c2fb524a4b5_247.html
 
and tracking sensitivity also:
 
https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/z8/en/csmg_af_tracking_sensitivity_guid-54657d66-753f-7fcb-b56b-2b78446094a0_248.html
 
For me the video AF has been excellent on the Z8.

Specifications sell products to people who don't know how to judge something for themselves.

I got this pop up from fb feed, I think design wise this is probably the best with build in suction cup instead of velcro to stick on the camera.
As earth getting more hotter I think fan might be mandatory in the future for videos.
 https://www.ulanzi.com/products/ulanzi-camera-cooling-fan-for-sony-canon-fujifilm-c072gbb1
 
 

Just sharing my likes/dislikes about the Z8. No camera is perfect and I may very well warm up to it with more time spent with it, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Its definitely a very high-spec tool at an aggressive price point. Again I love the body size, the stacked sensor, the high-resolution, and the codecs. Camera just seems to have some quirks both in operation and output.
Yeah RF isn't a good solution for third-party lenses. But the native ones are really top level albeit pricey and you can adapt certain lens systems to RF.
45mp is obviously great for substantial cropping. Didn't realise how useful it was until I started messing around with +45mp files. Now I can't get enough it..
And yes R5C has DIS that you can combine with OIS. Found this video about it:
 

Indeed, just look at the leap forwards in improvement from GPT2 to GPT3
Or each generation from Midjourney V1 vs V2 vs V3 vs V4 vs vV5 (and those 5 generations only took a single year to happen!!!). 
https://aituts.com/midjourney-versions/ 
We might laugh at the efforts of generative AI video right now, but they're no worse than Midjourney V1 was.... 
Perhaps 50/50 odds we'll have the Midjourney V5 equivalent for video by 2028:
https://manifold.markets/ScottAlexander/in-2028-will-an-ai-be-able-to-gener 
Or maybe even higher odds than that... 
https://manifold.markets/firstuserhere/will-we-have-end-to-end-ai-generate-12f2be941361 
https://manifold.markets/firstuserhere/will-we-have-end-to-end-ai-generate-de41c9309e38 
I agree with your disagreeing.
That's a good analogy! 
And if it is carefully/appropriately managed, you can even have a change in voice actor who is doing these characters, and almost none of the fans will notice or care. 
Another good analogy. It is indeed very likely, I feel, that the country as a whole will be massively better off and wealthier thanks to AI. But... there will also be huge numbers of individuals (such as those middle aged textile workers) who will be a lot worse off. 
We'll be able to have super niche "micro celebrity AI avatars"
At the moment, celebrities need a certain amount of broad appeal. As  you said, they need to avoid offending their fans. So end up appealing to the common denominator, because what might appeal to one section of the fan base could drive away other fans who get offended by it. But once you're freed from the physical constraints, then an "AI celebrity" could cater to any and all of these micro niche fanbases. 
"I think there is a world market for about five computers." ~ IBM's president, Thomas J Watson (said in the early 1940's) 
Nah, my Raspberry Pi can run a LLM. (ok, only a baby-ChatGPT that's quite cut down, and somewhat crippled. But even if I want to run a LLM that's quite close to the power of GPT3, that only costs me much much less than a $1/hr, in fact, more like a handful of cents per hour. It is cheap to run a LLM)
It's predicted as highly like that even GPT4 can be run on consumer grade hardware by next year:
https://manifold.markets/LarsDoucet/will-a-gpt4equivalent-model-be-able 
What you're thinking about, is the costs to train GPT4 from scratch. That's VERY EXPENSIVE! 
But still, it isn't quite as bad as you think. If a government wanted to do it, then absolutely any government in the OCED  could do this, they could do it ten times over. Likewise, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies in the world which could train the next GPT4 if they wanted to. (GPT4 would've cost roughly the same order of magnitude as $100M in costs, waaaay out of reach for you and me, but easily within reach of many many other organizations) 
But they won't, because the costs to train their own GPT4 vs the profits they could make (as AI is quickly becoming a very competitive space!) just isn't worth it. 
The good news though, is that costs for training are dropping drastically fast! 
Look at this prediction, it is highly likely that before 2030 it will cost under $10K to train from scratch a GPT3 quality LLM (i.e. any keen hobbyist can do it themselves!):
https://manifold.markets/Gigacasting/will-a-gpt3-quality-model-be-traine 
And that's yet another reason why there are not hundreds of other companies training their own GPT4, why put that risk into it if you're not already an industry leader in this? When your $100M+ investment could quickly within a few short years be worth next to nothing. You need a solid business plan to recoup your costs fast. OpenAI can do that, because they're massively funded with Microsoft's backing, and they have a first mover advantage. 
Too late, that genie left the bottle long ago. 
 

Had a quick go at the Z8 the other day. Shot some 8K ProRes test footage with a vintage Nikkor AIS lens and the Z 35mm f1.8.
I have mixed feelings about it. For some reason the IBIS was disabled on the AIS lens, not sure if that's the case with all adapted lenses or not but it was rather disapointing (VR and EIS was greyed out). That said, it was pretty glorious seeing that vintage lens in 8K for the first time! 
N-Log is kind of a can of worms. Footage is pretty noisy at ISO800 and yeah the provided Nikon LUTS really do suck, horrible highlight roll-off that kills the DR. The info is there though so you'll get better results going manual.
The menus and button control is probably the worst from any system, sorry Nikon it really does my head in. Also the grip felt sticky which is not cool. The size/weight is just right, love the LCD hinge system and overall build quality.
Just a quick first impression so I guess take what I say with a grain of salt. I do like the camera despite my few gripes and might even try renting it to spend more time with it as again the menu/UI takes a lot of getting used to.

Currently waiting for a gig to start tonight with my Pocket.
Fashionably early though !
Nice to have a stabilised anamorphic camera that raises absolutely zero eyebrows from security staff either on the way in or when you are using it.

Only union productions are affected, everyone else can continue working. 

“Today we lost our jobs for you”
https://www.eoshd.com/news/film-support-crews-hit-out-at-sag-strike/

The strike is only ok for those who can afford it!

I think he only wanted to mention his point, kye, your posts are priceless. Period.
Greetings to you from a grateful community,
Emanuel

One poster- you must be talking about me. @markr041 I meant "thin and not overly attractive". Typo in the last word. 😂 With thin colour I mean a look like a crayon sketch on paper, as opposed to thick as oil paint on a canvas, rich, subtle, involving, like in a Rembrandt painting. But that is just due to the neutral palette left as is after the CST, or Lut, if that is preferred.
I have seen some awesome colour coming from the 12 bit NRaw on youtube. It´s just a matter of colour grading and what one is aiming for with powerhouse cameras such as a modern Panasonycanikon. Would love to test an Z8 or Z9s NRaw. 12+ stops of dynamic range are plenty to work with for me. Would love to hear from deezid about his findings with the Lumix S5 II and Braw. @deezid

All manufacturers LUTs are pretty bad but Nikon is on a different level of bad.

I'm using Cinema Tools for both Nikon and Sony and quite happy with them. 

The most recent official LUT is plain awful. Someone on a Z9 facebook group posted one which is much better, smoother and with more dynamic range. In general terms the camera has average dynamic range, it's OK and gets the job done, shadow recovery is pretty good. The camera ergos, screen and evf are really nice though, I like shooting with it and the Nikon Z 24-70 f2.8 is a really nice lens. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/nikonz9/permalink/641169057847137/

The Z8 as an APS-C video camera.
You can shoot RAW in DX mode, which crops the sensor and gives you 5405x3040 clips, better than 5K and much better than 4K. You can shoot RAW at the highest quality (HIGH), with the bitrates 1/4th those for 8K - so you can shoot 48 minutes at HIGH RAW on a 1TB card, as opposed to 12 minutes for 8K!
You can of course us DX (APS-C) lenses in those mode. For this video I used the FF Nikon Z 24-70 f4 lens. An advantage of the crop is that mostly one is using the center of the lens, so corner drop-off is irrelevant - most lenses from Nikon are really good in the center.
So, how does it look:
Think meerkats - habitat and inhabitants in their activities.
5K (5120x2880) frame grabs:
 

Was this color graded? Yes, heavily (and no LUTs) like all of my videos, to create the "illusion of reality."
Think National Geographic video of meerkats - no film-like color tints or distortions; rather see the habitat and watch the activities of its inhabitants as if you were there. But with humans, unlike with animals and birds, one cannot hide or wear a disguise or shoot with an enormous lens.
Some good stills too:

Do I want it? Yes.
Do I need it? Actually also yes.
Yes if I am to take my work to the next level which is to go from 3 to 2 cameras with true hybrid capability.
‘True hybrid capability’ for me = being able to shoot video and stills with the same unit but also pull stills from the video that could have been shot as stills as the latter deletes the need for that 3rd body for me.
The Z9 however is really the only current body that offers me that with 8k 60p internal raw so as things stand, the benchmark.
Paired with a Z8 and a pair of zoom lenses (28-75 and 70-180) and that’s it for me, all my needs met.
L Mount really is going to have to have the equivalent available early 2024 or I can’t see any other option to go back to Nikon after a 12 year hiatus.
I would not shoot 8k 60p all the time however, just at certain specific times. I’m not totally bonkers! 

Sound check. Internal mics protected by attached wind muffs recording jazz:
with activities: feeding, chess, boxing, typing, posing.
And an 8K frame grab:
And the rig:
 
 

For my use, it seems the Sony ZV E1 is the better option. I tried out the Z8 shooting my mode type of video, in a public place, and it was clear the Z8's size, and the Z lenses, make the camera and thus me way more conspicuous than when I use the ZV E1 with the same specced lens (24-70 f4). Now, for an event videographer, this is completely irrelevant- people expect to be included in video, and the camera person can carry an IMAX camera and it would not make a difference. But, I do not want people stopping what they are doing to pose.
The ZV E1 can also go from 4K 60P to 4K 120P with zero change in quality or framing, so going to slow motion and retaining 60p (which I now insist) is easy. And, with dynamic active stabilization it is possible to move with the camera without a gimbal, and that is not possible with the Z8. Finally, the Sony's built-in wind muff makes obtaining audio outdoors possible without worrying about wind, the enemy of audio.
BUT. There is 8K RAW. Compression is the big enemy of video. And removing one compression step is a big deal. Moreover, as computer algorithms and compression techniques improve over time, the transformation from the RAW video clips in post can only get better. With HEVC or even ALL-I clips (and those partially-debayered fake RAW's), you are stuck with today's technology, and it is far from perfect. The 30+ megapixel frame grabs from 8K video, shot in 60 fps so there is minimal blur yet smooth video, are magnificent. I can handle the Z8 fine; its AF and tracking do not seem much different from the Sony. And I have stuck on the camera my own wind muffs, so I think I can deal with wind too using the built-in mics (which seem very good). Again, I cannot rig a camera for the video I like to shoot with an external mic with wind muff, and most of those mics that mount on a camera are no better than the internal mics - cheaper, small omnidirectional mics can be very high quality while directional mics usually have limited frequency range at the bottom, among other issues.
My Z8 8K 60p RAW video "test":
This can be viewed in 8K with Chrome (not Edge or safari).
And two 8K frame grabs:

@markr041 What are your overall thoughts on the camera vs the Sony's you've been using heavily for the last few months?

Testing NRAW HIGH Zlog 8K 60P at Night using ISO4000 (the alleged second base ISO):
HDR 8K. Nikon Z 40mm f2 lens.

@markr041 I struggle to understand how and why we have to fight hard to buy or get access to some new releases but you invariably come here to post stuff from every single piece of most recent gear we've all been dreaming/salivating about! LOL : ) Are you used to buy them all? :- )