Ilkka Nissila

The problem is that people online gather to complain (if they are happy they are usually silent), and the more appealing the price is, the more they seem to want to be sure they are getting their money's worth, assuming that every missing feature is an attempt to scam them of their money. The ZR price puts it into the radar of bargain hunters who have this mindset. I'm confident enough that Nikon will improve h.265 log footage adequately to make it satisfying to use for those situations where RAW or Prores footage takes up too much space. It might not be the best h.265 nor does it have to be, given the price of the camera, but it shouldn't be noticeably soft, either. I also hope the Prores LT codec comes soon, and that the noise reduction can be adjusted when using Prores HQ and LT formats.

Presumably it is so that the footage from the ZR can be more easily color graded by those who are familiar with RED footage, and the material from the ZR can be mixed with that from RED cameras with easier and better color compatibility. Nikon's issue is that the video from its hybrid cameras (especially in SDR mode) is designed to color match with the stills from Nikon cameras and cinema people have their own preferences that differ from that of the stills world. Nikon has been gradually adding features to make it easier to make the footage look similar to that of RED cameras, and this is another step in that process. Personally I like the SDR colors from Nikon cameras in video as they are so familiar to me as a stills shooter, and if I want to present video and stills from an event, they match by default. I appreciate that for video there are reasons to use log formats for encoding the data in a more efficient way to get a wider range of tones and colors recorded while keeping file sizes in check, and this encoding can vary from camera brand to camera brand, making mixing the footage across brands to a cohesive whole more challenging. The 4:2:0 vs. 4:2:2 has to do with how the colors of adjacent pixels are encoded to save space, I don't necessarily see how this would affect the overall "look" or dynamic range of the footage, which the log profile might affect. Nikon does support 4:2:2 in Prores in the ZR. I would assume the RED Log profile would likely be available for Prores files as well, after suitable firmware updates have been made available.

I would be very surprised if manufacturers let reviewers keep the test units for free; all I've ever heard about is that either the reviewer has to buy it themselves, or the unit is loaned for brief time for testing and then has to be sent back. Of course, with a few cases, the advertising campaign for a product hires photographers to make promotional photos but if they want to keep the gear they have to buy it. Is Hasselblad now an exception to this? From what little I've used Hasselblad, I think the color rendition is great, and the image quality is nice as long as you don't crop the images. Mostly the image quality advantage is dependent on the use of the full sensor area and there is nothing special in the images if you crop them into full-frame image size or smaller (and the sensor is not that much bigger than 35 mm full frame, unlike film-based medium format systems which could have 6x7 cm, 6x9 cm or even bigger areas). But I do think Hasselblad does a great job with the out-of-camera colors. I like the X series body shape and design, but did not like the slow EVF of the unit I shot with (it was not a X2 series, maybe there is improvement now?). If the EVF refresh was as fast as on a Nikon Z8 I would probably own a Hasselblad system. Notice the X2 series bodies have no video capabilities.

The ZR does allow the main card and battery to be replaced without taking the camera off the tripod provided that the plate or rig is designed right for the camera and a suitable head is used. Yes, the micro slot is unfortunate. But for video, no Nikon camera has dual card recording anyway, so the main card is where it's at. The orientation of the battery and main card along the width of the body makes the body a bit wider than it could have been if there had been a larger grip, but if optimizing for the fraction the LCD takes up of the camera's back side surface, this design is understandable. The MKE 600 shotgun microphone is 25 cm long and with the supplied cold shoe foot, its rear end extends quite a bit behind the camera, like with many longer shotgun mics it blocks comfortable access to the viewfinder. Longer shotguns give better side rejection and can sound less distorted but because they are long and mirrorless cameras tend to be short, there is a bit of a compatibility issue which does not exist with professional camcorders that are long enough to accommodate these mics without interfering with the picture or the shooter's forehead. However, camcorders typically give lower image quality at wide angle focal lengths which are a priority for me for many situations where I want the camera to be close to the subjects. My desire for a larger screen is not without limitations, the camera must be small and light enough to comfortably use on a gimbal (for potentially long shoots), for those situations where I do want to use one. Of course, one can use a camera without a gimbal, but I have situations where it is useful and a priority. A BMCC would make the gimbal setup too heavy. I have Nikon lenses so it makes economic sense for me to use Nikon camera bodies as well, and get lens corrections automatically applied to the video footage. Yes, 3.2" is usable but 4" would be better. I find particularly for manual focusing a larger screen would be better. I already have the Z8 which has a full-sized HDMI, though it has no XLR connections. I imagine Nikon would within the next few years make a higher-end video-first model that would sit between the ZR and the Komodo, and be more head-to-head competitor with the FX5. The ZR is just one camera in presumably a lineup that Nikon have yet to make. Why do I want to use a gimbal with a mirrorless camera? Let's say I am shooting a parade with music and performances moving across the streets. I need wide angle (because subjects can be tall) with keystoning controlled, and since there is no guarantee that a fixed spot along the way will give me the best moments, a tripod is not ideal. The gimbal keeps keystoning from appearing (with a suitable lens and appropriate mode), and keeps the camera level while I'm moving. The drawback is that I need a separate sound person - which is a big drawback.

The difference might seem small in specs but it's a 25% increase in area and 50% increase in display pixels. If making the display still larger, the camera would need to increase in size, and the balancing of the current size on a gimbal is easier than a taller camera such as the Z8 or Z9. Rigs get bigger, gimbals get bigger, total weight of the working setup goes up. I think it's a very good compromise in this aspect.

The ZR is small and lightweight for a full-frame camera with such a large and high resolution back display. The ZR body is 22% lighter than the Z6 III. The hand grip of the Z6 III is not just a grip, it houses the battery which is in a different orientation in the ZR. The large diameter Z mount also places constraints on how small the camera can be. To me it is difficult to imagine how one would make a still smaller camera body that has in-camera VR and a 4" or larger display. Why is the size of the LCD important? I want to clearly see what I am shooting without touching the camera (potentially shaking it). EVF use on mirrorless cameras is often not practical as it's fundamentally incompatible with gimbal use, and also many shotgun mics like the MKE 600 would not make it possible for me to use a viewfinder. Thus I want the best back LCD I can have for video applicarions. I do want the camera to produce practical files as well and hope Nikon can do something about it. I am not surprised it takes them some time, but hopefully within 2026.

I think you'll find that you are expected to pay disproportionally (/a lot) more money for a slightly better feature set. 😉 How else are manufacturers supposed to bridge the gap in pricing between an individual vlogger's camera (2000€) and cameras made for cinema and TV network productions (30k€-300k€) where 50-100+ people are listed in the credits and their salaries total much more than the equipment used in the production? This apparent gap in prices is likely due to the fact that there are so many vloggers (a low price can be offered due to the large volume and stills photographers using the same cameras) and a small number of studios and networks with very specific needs and completely different production workflows (so a small number of units with very specific needs are made, at high prices). How this gap between product categories is covered is likely a significant challenge, and will always cause some customer unhappiness. For gimbal use, and extended arm use (vlogging with person shooting and talking to the camera) the small size and low weight, combined with a large display of the ZR are probably ideal. What such a user needs a R3D RAW workflow for, is a bit of a mystery for me. 🙂 I imagine productions using RED cameras as main cameras might be happy to use the ZR for situations where the RED camera is too large to fit, or too expensive, such as mounting on cars, etc. they can then more easily color match the footage from the different cameras. The larger the camera and the heavier it is, the larger the gimbal needs to be, and hand-holding a gimbal gets tiring quickly if the setup is heavy. For this purpose I would imagine the ZR is good, provided that one can handle the data. I find the Z8 with 24-70/2.8 internal zoom and RS 5 would be too heavy for me. Nikon does offer better h.265 and other codecs in Z8 and Z9 (with no excessive noise reduction in log footage), for example, but no R3D NE. Here the color matching is good between traditional Nikon stills camera color science and the video, rather than that of traditional video and cinema camera manufacturers.

N-RAW Normal at 25 fps should be below 1000 Mbps. If I calculated correctly, N-RAW High Quality (which is similar to R3D NE) has a compression ratio of approximately 1:4 compared to uncompressed raw video (which is not available on the ZR, for obvious reasons). N-RAW Normal is about 1:8. RED's own codecs (not TicoRAW) in the (not Nikon) RED cameras range from 1:2 to 1:22 depending on settings. I suspect Nikon didn't implement the lower quality TicoRAW in the R3D NE codec (although both Normal and High Quality are available in N-RAW) because of the additional quality loss, and as a matter of protecting the quality expectations associated with the RED brand. They could be simply trying to impress. The ZR body is quite lightweight and slim, and adding more heat sink materials, a fan etc. to enable better quality compressed codecs would have made it larger and heavier, as would adding more hinges and mechanics to make the back LCD screen more flexible in the angles that are offered. I can imagine a bunch of things that could be wanted, such as full size HDMI, SDI, XLR, etc. connectors. THe ZR is probably as small and light as Nikon could make while enabling long recording times and R3D NE recording. Rather than focus on the data rates, I am puzzled at the lack of fully featured software support for the raw video formats. Some formats (R3D NE) reportedly offer a good visual match between what you see on the camera LCD with LUT applied but if you want to apply distortion corrections, a separate transcoding utility need to be applied to convert the footage to Prores. With N-RAW you can get lens profiles applied in Davinci Resolve, but the color doesn't apparently look like how it was on the camera display (?). If you use Premiere, N-RAW is shown with RED's Log profile, which then is different from what you see on camera in the view assist mode. People complain that you cannot cut the R3D NE and remove parts and rewrite the edited footage in the R3D NE format, instead it has to be transcoded into something else before the trimmed footage can be stored (if it is stored in R3D NE format the file does not get smaller). With N-RAW you can cut parts out and store it in N-RAW, so why is this different for R3D NE? Or did I get I could have gotten some parts wrong but to me it seems the software support is as much missing as the camera firmware, and the raw video is sort of an experimental feature at this point. Some comment and seem to think that to get the maximum quality is essential but then complain that the resulting files are too large, even though they are compressed at 25% of original data size, and further compression visibly reduces the image fidelity. I think for video there has to be a realization that you cannot get still-camera like detail and expect small file sizes. A compromise needs to be made. I like using Prores 422 HQ 4K on the Z8 as it allows the distortion profiles to be applied based on lens type and still looks fantastic to my eye, while avoiding the 8K. I can immediately tell the h.265 (which in Nikon's case is always 4:2:0) does not have as rich color on textured, colorful clothes as the 422 codec. Absurd in-camera file sizes, almost as big as 6K RAW? Yes, but it just looks gorgeous and is easy to edit. I delete the original files once I'm done with editing. I can't imagine shooting 8K RAW but with a 6K camera the RAW option is a possibility, once storage costs go down. At the moment the cost of a fast external SSD I got 3 years ago is three times as high as it was in 2023! Hard drives seem less affected and are a possibility for long-term storage, but for editing the SSDs are better. About your lens preferences, the 50-150/2.0 is 4599€ here, quite pricey! Although a set of f/2.0 primes would also be expensive, and together would be heavier, I still would choose the primes for their smaller size in hand, or use the 70-200/2.8 as a classic choice which is available on all major mounts. But I can see that a portrait and event-oriented photographer might prefer the f/2.0 zooms over primes or the f/2.8. I don't think the f/2.0 zooms will become mainstream though, as the f/2.8 are very high quality, lower priced, and have greater range.

The FX5 is 5599€ here, the ZR is 2449€. I think most customers understand the ZR is not meant to be an FX3 or FX5 at half price.

The ZR is a smaller and lighter body and thermal management could be the issue. The Z8 and especially Z9 have a lot of mass that includes heat sinks that help keep components cool. None of them have cooling fans. The Zf (the one with the dials) is another smaller and lighter body (compared to Z8; it is not nearly light as the ZR) and it's actually quite easy to get it to get hot in stills shooting. Nikon made a choice to keep the ZR design quite thin without a built-in fan, and to make long recording times available, they seem to have compromised on the shadow noise reduction algorithm to reduce processor load, the result is a h.265 codec which in log mode is soft. They have indicated that they are working on a firmware update with a higher quality h.265 in mind.

The main reason these patents have been considered legit in the US patent system despite the so-called inventions being obvious to any technical person familiar with photography, is probably that the US patent office's main purpose is to protect the interests of US-based companies, such as RED, against foreign businesses. Rational arguments don't necessarily apply, if the case involves a US vs. foreign manufacturer and the litigation happens in the US. Now, since a Japanese company (Nikon) currently owns RED, it's quite possible the US position also changes (not because of Panasonic's arguments but because there is no longer a US-owned business interest for the US patent office to protect). It is difficult see how a Nikon lawyer would defend these patents with a straight face, so their arguments may be ineffective. Anyway, most camera manufacturers nowadays seem to have some raw video capabilities in their cameras so the issue is not that pressing any more. It made sense for Nikon to buy RED to gain expertise and a presence in the mid and higher end video markets, irrespective of any patent issues. What do users complain the most about the first Nikon video camera? That the raw video files are too big. So, why was there so much fuss about the patents anyway, if people don't actually want to use raw video recording in practice?

If you have 20 mm and 60 mm as the equivalent focal lengths that are available, the wider angle makes sense for including oneself in the footage, and showing a bit of environment, which must be a common thing in social media. However, at least I would preferentially shoot with 35 mm or 50 mm a lot of the time. By starting with an 8K sensor, you can get more detailed crops that mimic those lenses at least in angle of view. Of course, you lose light in cropping so the quality won't be the same as using one of the native options, but it is probably less damaged than if you start with a 4K sensor and crop from 20 mm to (say) 50 mm. I'm personally perfectly happy shooting in 4K with a 35 mm full-frame mirrorless camera and doing a bit of cropping doesn't really bother me, but the camera that I use makes the 4K footage by downsampling from 8K resolution, so even in the 4K file (typically for me Prores 422 HQ), there is a better starting point for cropping than if I had shot with a 4K native sensor camera (due to the Bayer sensor not registering all colors for all pixels natively). I think 20 mm would be extremely wide to shoot everything with (that's what the DJI Pocket 4P's magical sensor produces, 20 mm equivalent footage), and I'd want to moderate the angle of view a lot of the time to something in the 35 to 50 mm range. Thus the sensor resolution is likely to play some role in the practical quality that can be obtained. Although I like the idea of a camera that has a gimbal and can be just taken out of the bag and used, and I commend DJI for bringing the long-in-development LOFIC sensor into an actual consumer product, neither of these cameras (luma ultra and Pocket 4P) are really for me as I basically never do videos with myself in the footage, and the 20 mm equivalent angle of view is just not what I want from a video camera. Cropping (to get an acceptable angle of view) from a small-sensor camera is going to make noise more visible and detail less clear. I think use of a gimbal on a heavy full-frame mirrorless camera is painful for the setup that is required. Eventually I think some good compromises will arise, with moderately light total weight, internal (optical) zooms that don't require recalibration after FOV change, better integration of camera controls into the gimbal user interface, and some digital signal processing that is optimized to reduce the gimbal motor noise from on-camera audio tracks (this will require work on the motors themselves and the processing) are likely to make things more practical for me, but for now most of the time my gimbal is just not being used. With regards to the dynamic range, I'm used to slide film from long ago and when using it (for still photography) it was essential to photograph in what we called good light, which meant light that was suitable for the material, with no exposure latitude whatsover, and I still try to choose where I shoot so that the subjects and the scene will look good straight out of the camera where possible. With my camera the top video dynamic range is 12 stops and I've not run into anything that would make that feel inadequate, given the starting point of acceptable conditions for photography to begin with, in fact it feels wildly liberating what kind of post exposure adjustments are possible today. I would argue that if there is a situation which requires higher dynamic range, then alternatives probably result in better quality: use lighting for the main subjects in the foreground. If the scene can't be lit then shoot in a location which gives better results without lighting. Post-processing has its limits and I would argue it is not easy to mimic really good lighting on a scene with high contrast but no light (or too little light) on the subjects in post-processing. However, if you can use and benefit from 17 stops of dynamic range, by all means use it if available. I think my life is easier by carefully choosing where the original material is shot.

If you can afford the cards and temporary space on an internal drive, you could shoot in R3D NE in camera and then after transferring the files to the computer, convert it to log h.265 and delete the original files. By doing this you can get high-quality h.265 and avoid the long-term accumulation of storage otherwise needed for the raw files, not much different from having a high-quality h.265 codec in the camera, apart from the fact that you would need large memory cards and some space on the computer's internal drives for this step. I'm not trying to make an excuse for Nikon for the h.265 but suggesting a workaround who have this camera for one reason or another, and need a practical workflow.

Maybe. It could also be how the lens renders people, that gives me the sense of artificiality. I do see a significant image (and sound) quality reduction when uploading my own video to youtube at the settings and video format recommended by youtube. I've been trying to figure out how to minimize this issue, and one way is to use the highest-quality format as an intermediate for uploading (QuickTime with Prores HQ). I've not gotten to test this enough to come to a conclusion. I think to evaluate noise reduction and other algorithmic processing done by the camera, one would need to look at subject detail also, and how faithful the details and color in the image are to the subject. This is affected by the lens in addition to digital image processing and compression, but when evaluating a fixed (non-removable) lens camera, it is fair since the user can do nothing to change the optics. Anyway, if this sensor and optics available for 1" sensors satisfy the video community then a lot of money can be saved by not having to invest in larger sensor cameras. It also means making videos of satisfactory quality (or quality that is perceived as very good by the public) will become much more accessible to the general public and thus worth less in the job market, as has become the case for still photography. However, I'm not really convinced just yet.

No, I have only viewed DJI's and various youtubers' material of the Pocket 4P. I assume everyone will use settings that will make the footage look its best as they would for their normal work, what would be the point of using settings that produce subideal results? Some of the youtubers did mention tweaking the settings to their preferences. A lot of cameras don't have any settings that would reduce noise reduction of their video files to zero, I would not be surprised if this is the case here as well.