Danyyyel

Q&A from Mark Bone

Absolutely beautiful imagery. Some shots are very square, and some were asking if it was an opengate mode LOL

Any English version?

I have also been searching for the Nikon ZR DR/Latitude test, and result been a bit all over the place. I think one reason for the latitude test discrepancies is that the first reviewers were not able to use Davinci and had to use REd own software and it might have induced some errors...The Nikon Z6iii is better in the highlight than the Zr, which can't be true!!! . Their was also some talk that Nikon/RED got another stop of DR during their test/development. Below is a test side by side with the Panasonic S1ii, which is a bit of the king in terms of DR/latitude and their might be neck and neck to half a stop of exposure latitude between both. Their are little discrepancy like light positioning that make me say that. He is at 4.5 over and 3.5 under that would give about eight stops, you could give another half stop to the S1ii in the highlight. For example, CINED gave the S1ii without DR boost a solid 9. This could be because they test at 1080p. If you reduce the size from 4k to 1080p, you might get another half a stop to a stop in the shadows as it would reduce the noise. For reference most Canons are at 7 to 8 stops of latitude, the Sony Venice is a 8 stops, the RED Raptor is at 9 and the Alexa LF is at 10 stops of latitude. He also has test of the highlight rolloff and the Zr looked a little better and the flickering in the shadows. Which is not present in the REDraw file, but is in the Prores one!!! In this one, with the french tester (You can get English dub), he gets about 5 up and 3 3.5 down. You also have this korean tester with the DR test with the Xyla chart and Imatest software. He got like 13.5 in Nlog!!! And 12.9 in REDraw. His DR test starts at around 23 minutes. Last thing is that CineD responded on their page saying they had a ZR on test for a week (% days ago) but they had some problem that they were trying to resolve with Nikon.

They are from the same sensor and if the ZR can achieve the same as the S1ii, then it would already be very very good (RED Raptor territory). The S1ii has the DR boost mode which showed 10 stops of latitude, that is Alexa LF level, but with 27ms, which is not great at all.

Nice video from Nikon India.

Nice side by side test video of the ZR and RED Dragon and Komodo. As always it is the Komodo which is little bit the odd one. His latitude test was unfortunately flawed as he did not match the 18% grey exposure. The one where you overexpose is clearly too bright compared to the underexposed one. I went to watch his other video review of the Pana S1ii, and their, the base exposure was very close. Here it is easily around a good stop overexposed. I did some screen grab and looked at the RGB values as I was a bit insure if it was not my eyes playing games to me. Here he has 4.5 overexposed and 3.5 down. That is 7.5 to eight and the S1ii he had 5 above and 4 below so 9 stops of latitude. Edit: I forgot to add, he is supposed to do a test of the S1II and ZR. Hopefully he does a good latitude test with same lighting and exposure, as the S1ii has become the king of DR in that price range.

Do you have a link to the video? For me, this could be just a sharpness setting or the person might be moving slightly. One thing this tells me, is that the H265, is not as bad as some people have made it to be.

Another very nice video

Are these Nikon Zr footage, or just someone putting it to get views? Just a hint that these are from France, as Limoges is a well known Basket Ball team in France. Another edit, I now saw the links.

Nice video about the ZR audio capabilities. The internal mics are quite impressive for onboard mic, but the directional pattern can only be used in non RAW video.

Funny how the ZR has reached legendary status even before its launch. Youtubers getting destroyed in the comments when making some stupid comparison. This is one example, but I have seen others... if you would have told me a Nikon camera would have got so much support, I would not have believed it. They really have got some momentum, I hope they try at least to satisfy the request of the people toward the ZR, because it is their Canon 5DmarkII moment.

After all the fuss about the ZR h265, with some youtubers including Gerald Undone, high claim that the ZR h265 was unusable. I was very worried, but also perplexed because, even with my D750 24mbit 1080p footage, the h264 and nowadays Nikon H265 had been very robust and good. But until now, very few actual footage in h265 to make an opinion. Until I saw this test. Guess what, all those BShitters were exaggerating as always dunking on Nikon. In this Chinese test, from about 15.30, you have nearly every footage in h265 and the quality is good, even the 4k 120 fps in apsc. I can see every hair of those girls dancing even with YouTube compression on my 65 inch TV. I don't think you need much more for your Bride or CEO shots.

I still have problem with Gerald Undone, and this is exemplified with Canon C50 vs Nikon ZR review. I don't question his numbers, but how he interpreted them for his bias. Man pissed on the ZR t every corner, but excused the worst or the worst for Canon. The simple example is the ZR micro hdmi vs Canon C50 lack of IBIS. Yes it is an inconvenience the ZR doesn't have a full size hdmi, but it can be remedied with a 100 USD cage plus lock. But what about the lack of IBIS, you would need a full set of big supporting gear. Either a tripod, shoulder mount or gimbal. But hey, his excuse is that he talked with some first AC, and they told him that they prefer the sensor to be locked, as if the C50 principal use will be on movie sets!!!!! He is revolting, how dare Nikon put cinema on the ZR, but does he think that the ZR/C50/Fx3 will be primarily use on cinema sets!!! Is he crazy, 99.9% of their use will be in events, corporate videos, weddings, reportage, social media content creation etc. At the top you will find them used on small to average advertising production, short films, small to no budget films. And in rare case as specialist camera like crash cam, in higher end production. But again in those 99.9% cases, stabilization is a big big plus for those production. But hey, Nikon dared to put Cinema on the ZR. I mean a camera that has better image than 90% of digital camera just 5 years ago.

Yep, looks more like it. It is good if they supply this as you can get a 2TB for about same price as a 512 GB CFexpress card. But you are still left with gigantic files if you want to achieve your work. Perhaps the best solution would be in Nraw normal, then rename them to RED. Or use the Nikon RED luts.

On Gerald Undone example, it looked not that good. But I think it is at pixel level!!!

If it is true, for me, the pefect workflow for RAW use, will be the 4k Nraw converted to RED raw. As it should be around 350 Mbs, which is very good for RAW. The only thing I don't know is how do they get this from a 6k sensor. In Gerald Undone, it did look a bit mushy, but I don't zoom 400% in my shots. The 4.1 k from my Z9 is perfectly usable. But in this case it is just half of the pixel.

Perhaps this is the reason, but for h265 it is 5.4 k and not 4k until 50-60 fps. Could those .6k make that much of a difference!!! I would have liked the impression of a z6iii shooter on the h265 format. I had a pre order for a z6iii with my reseller in my country. And I changed it to the ZR. I hope the h265 is good LOL. I was also very wary about the overheating as I live in a tropical island, but just saw another video, from a Vietnamese shooter, who said no overheating. I think he was one of those who filmed one of the launched video.

So this is a very good test of the ZR. I don't know if the english AI translation is 100% correct, but anyone can try it. He was ecstatic from the start about the DR of the camera and did a latitude test, using middle grey and overexposing and underexposing to see the level before clipping the highlight and the noise barrier. This test is very good for the ZR as DR/Latitude test have been a bit all over the place. If you watched the CVP test, it was like 6 at best 7 stops of latitude!!! The ZR was clipping even before the Z6III !!! My guess is most of the test were done before Davinci last update to incorporate REDraw NE etc. And the guys were using REDsoftware to convert the files in Tiff etc. and it might be that file did lose some information. He is getting 5 stop over and 3 to 4 stop below. So, a 8 to 9 stops of latitude, at nine it is huge. If you watch CineD lab test, you are in the RED raptorX, Panasonic S1ii territory. The Z9 approaches that, but most of the other Sony cameras (but mostly in compress format) like the Sony A1, Sony Venice (RAW) etc are at 8 stops. In their test, their is only the Sony Burano, Alexa LF at 10 stops and the Alexa 35 at 12 stops!!! His complain is like everyone about micro HDMI, and huge file size. I sincerely hope Nikon does give us a lower bitrate REdraw. He also says the h265 is bad, my guess it is that when you get use to that RAW, you see everything around bad. Matti Haapoja had the same reaction when comparing the ZR side by side with the Fx3. He then changed after using the h265 a bit more and said it was at least equal to the fx3 or better. Nikon Zr is its on worst enemy, when people compare its h265 to the raw, because the raw is so good, they feel the h265 is bad. But in the end very very positive about the camera.

One thing I saw, is that the R3d hack, give a more pleasing highlight rolloff, or preserving the highlight better, resulting in some more DR.

I think if you are using h265, you are going to use the full 6k resolution anyway. What I was saying is in RAW, you can half the data if you go from 6k to 4k. It is a compromise, but for me 4k native is already very good. I don't need more resolution. The only thing that would be really practical for me, would be to reframe the shot like in an interview setup in the video below. So I can simulate a 3 camera setup with only two cameras, which is so much easier to do.

I have not tested the Nikon ZR, but every Nikon cam that I have used before, from the Z6 to the Z9, H264-H265 have been very very good. You might not get the whole DR etc. but they have been really solid, even the D750 1080p 24mbs has been solid. LOL. Now, one thing I have been doing with my Z9 is use the 4k NRAW, which is only about 350 mb/s at 24 fps and also very good. The ZR also has a 4k NRAW/Redraw mode. Which would bring this type of bitrate. I also hope they also bring a lighter redraw mode. If not, you sill have the NRAW naming hack. Where by renaming NRAW to RED files, it is recognise by resolve as REDraw and process as if it was the same. It seems you can get a better Dynamic range and noise reduction like in the video below, where it even works on Nikon z8 nraw.

This video is very interesting about the conversion of the Nikon NEV to RED red file. The thing that is the most interesting to me, apart from the blue channel clipping, is about the dynamic range of the camera which he test as from 8.25. I think he has a Z8, if this is true in the highlight, the z9 which has been rated at 8.5-9 stops of latitude in the CineD lab test, could be either a solid 9 (Panasonic S1ii, RED V-RaptorX), or closer to 10, that would be Arri Alexa LF territory!!! I saw someone saying that his Nikon is like a new camera, about the highlight, but also that the chroma noise reduction was also very good. The Nikon Z6iii/ZR, is supposed to be the same sensor than the S1ii, with the only difference is that the Nikon's are at 9.1ms and the Pana is at 12ms. I would dream if nikon could give a slower version mode with the S1ii DR/Latitude. Because most of the time the slower read, creats less noise and thus more DR.

But if you hear Gerald, the Nikon is Shit, and the Canon will find a place as a Cine camera. The man cannot stop dunking on Nikon. Last week was, how come Nikon put cinema on this camera with its micro Hdmi... This week it is, but Dop and First AC have told me they prefer no IBIS. As if 99% of the people using the C50 will be on movie set. And not as one man band doing weddings, corporate events, social media content creation and some smaller advertising, and occasionally on some short movies. Same, for the ZR. No one expect it to be a cinema camera and replacing the RED raptor or Arri Alexa on most sets. The Ibis is 10x more important on such a camera than a micro hdmi that you can lock with a cage, and the camera itself coming with a big screen.

I will never understand this thinking when someone likes photography or videography. Today the only true thing they are changing in phones is the camera. My 2 years old Samsung will handle all my social media or call perfectly. Why not invest in a camera and lens, that will be their for the next decade, rather than buy a new phone every 2 3 years for 1000 USD and more, that will sorry to say, never match a FF camera.