Davide DB

I'm looking into semi-retirement.  Weirdly, not because of the jobs I'm getting or not getting in the next 12 months, (that's already set) but because my niche of freelance corporate gigs is definitely on the way out. 
It's the devaluing of video production in general.
With video now, everyone does it.  Quite literally.  Anyone with a new'ish phone camera is on the other side of a gate.  A gate that's been blocking people for over a century of motion picture creating.  Phone IQ is really good.  AI can help generate a ton of stuff with low effort/high reward.  Canva is a thing. Online tutorials explain production concepts.  Creative info flows like a torrent.  Hobbyists are better than careerist, etc. etc.
None of that looks like it'll affect me in 2026.  I have 3 clients with semi-large gigs that'll get me through.  Maybe they come around again in 2027?  Perhaps.  What value can I offer them?  A certain confidence in problem solving they require?  Sure.  For now.
However, for one of the clients specifically, I could easily do via AI in an afternoon compared to what it's gonna take me a week to do live in a studio.
So, yeah, I'm not gonna reveal that my client that yet, but still, that reality is here.
At this point, as a documentarian filmmaker on my CV, that's the thing I feel I can do without AI stealing it away, but, man, not exactly a bunch of people out there have EVER made lucrative careers outta being a documentarian filmmaker.
I mean, I'm decent at this sort of stuff, but I'm not, like, an elite creative, you know?  No ones ever gonna watch a doc I've made (yet) and walk away thinking, "Wow, I need to make sure to see what that guy is going to do next."  Hell, even the elite creatives in the documentary world barely make a living at it.
Looking back I kind of feel like I should've gone all-in on sports-video production when I had the chance 30 years ago.  Live event broadcasting will stick around for awhile.
Other than that, I'm an older married guy without kids that has acquired some in-demand-physical-assets throughout my younger days.  Because of that ownership, the wife and I do, luckily, have some things to help us through the final few decades of life.  Then again, 3 more decades of late-stage capitalism?  Gotta wonder about that too.

Yup, but to be fair, Lumix has had a lot of ‘love’ recently from the shill brigade but a lot of them will now (and have already started) flipping over to the ZR.
Soon though, Sony will be releasing the A7V and they will then flop back in that direction and will have gone full circle.
Beyond that, perhaps DJI will have popped out their rumored MILC and that will become The Next Big Thing?
It’s all inevitable.

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

I like the colors and overall image of this camera, especially for the low price, but Nikon definitely sacrificed DR for a faster readout. This is from G. Undone's test:

10.9 usable stops in 6K R3D NE is not great for a modern cinema camera. NR will get you another stop, but it's not an ideal starting point. By comparison, the Komodo 6K scored 12.5 usable stops in 6K R3D and the Komodo-X was at 12.9 when tested by CineD.
CVP's latitude test was also fairly extensive as it tested both native ISOs:


The good news is that you don't lose much DR when switching into the higher base. The bad news is that, no matter which base you use, most of its competitors have an extra stop in the highlights:





As for under exposure, it is usable to under 3, but no more. It is RAW after all, so this poor result is understandable when compared with the Sony cameras.




 
 

Tianluokeng Tulou clusters, Fujian Province, China.
These buildings have a very thick outer wall of earth and a 3-5 storey inner wooden structure that houses dozens of families.  The structure is designed to be stable during earthquakes and secure against bandits.  The oldest if the ones we visited was built in 1796.
These are just with a quick grade, mostly Resolve Film Look Creator. The DR in the scene is extreme, and while all the required info is in the files, I'm going to have to go heavy on the power-windows when I grade these properly.
Grabs from GH7 + 14-140mm zoom.








Grabs from iPhone 17 Pro shooting Prores Log with default app.
The Prores HQ Apple Log files grade really nicely, have heaps of DR, and are great to work with. The DR isn't quite as much as the GH7, but it's more than enough for these scenes.  These were graded at a different time to the above GH7 shots so probably don't match.





All-in-all, the iPhone well and truly punches above its weight when you take into account it's pocketability, the size of the sensor, and the incredible range in focal lengths.  Imagine how much you'd have to pay to get a lens that can do 13-200mm FF equivalent FOV and has exposure levels between F1.78 and F2.8 across the whole range.

The file sizes are still too large for my work. I shoot long form, or at least a full day's worth of footage and can easily come home with 400-500gb of footage as its stands. Prores 422 would double it.

It definitely seems like manufacturers are pushing Raw like it's the best thing since sliced bread.
The average buyer of the prosumer hybrid mirrorless cameras does not need Raw. 
I noted some chat above about bandwidth vs processing power. Seems this is also the case with the Lumix S1II/S1IE.
Seems like Lumix is beginning to favour Raw over H.264 and H.265 recording, which is very disappointing. I tested one for a weekend and was let down by the horrendous digital sharpening and aggressive noise reduction in the compressed codecs, even when it's turned all way way down, it's not "off".
Many claim the extra sharpening is to help the AF, but the AF still works in Raw - the only recording format that actually looks organic and natural. So it's evidently a processing problem.
I was really excited by the prospect of the S1II but I'm afraid it's completely unusable for my needs. I don't want or need Raw, I'd just like a nice, natural looking H.265 image please.

You seem to post nothing but angry negative stuff.  Why waste your time with all of us talentless hacks?

Dunno if anyone’s posted this on here, but i saw this on my instagram because i followed the DP a while ago, looked pretty good, with some unfortunate highlight clipping here and there.
wont help you guys because you cant really shoot.

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! 

In still photography, the storage space issue for RAW is less pressing than in video and since each still image can be studied for a long time (at least in print) people can pay more attention to quality (and photographers can afford more time into editing of individual frames with masks etc. while in video it would be extremely tedious to make exposure blending or other manually drawn mask based operations on a frame by frame basis). In the early years of digital system cameras, the difference between RAW and JPEG was more obvious and people got used to RAW because the image details were better and of course the files are more editable. For video, I suspect that RAW usage will be more limited to high end where there are professional colorists etc. and occasional shooters who don't shoot a huge quantity of material. But maybe I am wrong. 😉 

I prefer H.265 as well, over the pseudo raw formats.
Cinema DNG is still the best quality RAW in terms of the film look and unprocessed sensor readout.

Same arguments were valid in still photography. Lot of news/event shooters stuck with jpeg while the rest of photographers see the "jpeg only" sign on the camera display as a catastrophe. Its been always about having flexibility for artistic purposes. If your work is concentrated on documentation of real world as it is, Standard color profile Jpeg is the best choice.

That would make sense. Why would Nikon buy Red, introduce RedCode Raw into a camera and trick everyone by using NRaw and calling it RedCode? Seems kinda pointless. I am no expert in coding, but wouldn't it make more sense that Nikon had to implement R3D into the "language" that communicates with their processors. So R3D was reconfigured slightly. Just a guess, but has anyone tried to rename the R3D files as NRaw... I would guess that it works. 

Other than marketing, raw is easy. I mean in electronics, bandwidth is always cheaper to provide than processing power, and raw needs less processing and more bandwidth. Note how soon Sony increased the bandwidth per sensor lane from 4Gb/s to 12.5Gb/s. 8 of these can handle 100Gb/s, enough for 10k60p 12bit! 

The simultaneous release of the Zr and C50, along with Resolve's ability to import ProRes RAW, was truly like throwing a stone into a pond. Now the shilltubers and others are going crazy over RAW. I wonder if this is just a moment or if it will last.
I have played with the Zr RAW files you linked me to. Gorgeous. So far, there is no news of C50 files.
If any of you have representative ProRes RAW files from the S1II, S1R, and GH7 to share, you would be doing me a big favor.
What I wonder is, do we really need RAW? As far as I know, even in cinema it is used sparingly. Of course, knowing you can shoot in RAW if you need to is nice, but has the cost of storage dropped, or did I miss something? Where the hell do I save an archive of RAW files? I would prefer H.265 or similar files that are lightweight and pleasant to work with. I have seen files from the FX3/FX6 that were spectacular and graded like butter in the Color page.

Probably and until Resolve etc support the new codec.
But then I've seen some side by side comparisons with Nraw where the reviewer is saying, "look at how much less noise there is" and I agreed, there was less, but also, "look how much better these skin tones are" and I thought, really? have you got your labelling wrong because the Nraw looked better in your side by side examples.
So I guess until folks you know, love and trust start showcasing or you can get your own hands dirty, the jury is still out on just how good it is beyond the hype.
My own personal jury has ruled against it despite thinking the camera looks fabulous, the screen is killer and the pricing excellent, but no way am I going to be using those file sizes.
Lumix, get on with the S1H2 please.

So, everyone is talking about quality and analysis on the videos shared on YouTube, but no one has had the chance to download a raw file?
Did the shilltubers sign NDAs that don't allow them to share the original files? Will we have to wait for the camera to get into the hands of common users?

If no-one is able to assist here, might be worth asking in the relevant sub-forum on liftgammagain.com where the colourists all hang out.  Of course, you might get an answer that's more technical than you'd like...

BTS on the go.
 

I think C70 will still have more latitude to play with. But honestly people are way too much obsessed with these numbers. Past 12 stop, we either digging for random shot noise, or struggle to defeat sun. This shot by Roger Deakins would be rejected by YouTubers, in their mission impossible of saving highlights:

 

Somehow I missed this promo short film, its kinda brilliant in how it showcases a lot of the features in a pretty creative narrative, really liking the overall image from this new sensor:
 

So is NRAW really REDCODE or is REDCODE really NRAW, I am confused now.

If you put a card from a Z8 NRaw recording in a Z6iii does it play back?
And vice versa.