Jahleh

With Sony the only FW update you get is probably for your Playstation, but don’t worry, Sony will always release a cheaper model, which will have some of the features you miss. Canon R5II and R6III sounded tempting, but after looking the 3D pop & toneh show from YT I am not sure Canon IQ is any better than Nikon. It depends on which kind of image you like more. So it leaves only Panasonic and Nikon on the table for me. With them you might get some HW and FW quirks at launch, but they also try to fix them and give new good additional features along the years, not just in the form of new bodies like Sony. I have a 35mm F1.4 too, but it is only for those cases I can’t use the 135mm F1.8. My 50mm F1.2 captured only dust since I got the 135. Still not sure whether I should up or downgrade it and 35 F1.4 to 35 F1.2 or to boring, but easy to use 24-70 S II. Probably not. Thought also about swapping the Z6III and 400mm F4.5 to Z8, as with 2.3x crop 135mm would be 310mm F4.1 on Z8. Very likely not worth it either.

I had only original S5 before the S5II, but the various 8k and 4k H.264 4:2:2, H.265 4:2:0 and Proress samples from S1RII looked clearly not that over-sharpened during the short period I played with them in Resolve. They were much closer to S5, colors were kind of richer, and in low light shots it looked cleaner and good. I was seriously tempted to switch back, but did not want to get rid of my new Nikon lenses. I was also put off by the various crop modes and over heating. Now, with Z6III, ZR and 4 Nikon lenses it would need S2H with good EVF, 4” screen and H.265 IQ comparable to R3D NE for me to switch back. Proress Raw HQ file sizes are even bigger than what R3D NE has, and raw controls worse in Resolve, so that is not an option for me.

When S1RII came out I played also with the files Connor Maccaskill provided and they did look nice and cleaner compared to S5II footage I had captured during previous year or two. Still, as I already had my foot firmly in the Nikon Raw camp, did not want to pay the difference to change back to Panasonic.

Pretty sure pre-recording does not cover a minute or two longer periods and it probably needs someone to press the shutter or record button before action starts. Nikon has this auto capture, that would be a better solution if it works reliably and starts when subject enters the frame as configured in the settings and stops too. Still, in certain sports you need to start the camera well before execution, and not worry what it is doing, if you want to be able to perform.

Maybe, but if you happen to shoot a lot outside during nice sunset light and with a beautiful view behind where the action happens why on earth would you shoot only h.265, especially with the ZR, if you can shoot R3D NE or Nraw and be happy about the small IQ and ease of color grading improvements. This shooting being just a hobby to me that I can combine with other hobbies even small IQ improvements are worth it, if it makes you spend more time with the hobbies and be happier what you manage to capture. With Pana’s over sharpened h.265 it became more like set the camera and forget, and I had not that much interest chenking the captured footage nor edit it. But you do what suits you the best.

Well, if you do fast sports alone and want to capture the certain moment in slow mo when it happens if it happens at all, the only way is to set the camera to tripod, hit record and go do the sports you do. Then you trim and save only that special moment, not the whole clip. Oh wait, with R3D NE you can’t do that at the moment🤯

SSD review says 256GB and 512GB Lexar Professional Golds get up to 85C and the 2TB card only to 63C. In the same review Delkin Black 512GB is the coolest at 39C. I have had no problems with 2TB Lexar Professional Gold in Z6iii at 25C in direct mid day sun, but 6k50p NRaw may not be as taxing to the camera and card as Panny’s 422 H.265.

Exactly. Everything related to editing works. Only if you shoot long clips from tripod and want to save only some short trimmed parts of it as R3D NE raw, both Resolve and Red Cine X Pro do not work. Kind of assumed that as NRaw to R3D clips behave the same.

Editing R3D NE raw clips in Resolve works fine. For example if you shoot H.265 you can use quicktime in MacOS to open and view your clips, trim unwanted parts out and save only the important to SSD. For NRaw that does not work. I have used Resolve to import the NRaw clips from CFExpress card into the timeline, trim (cut) the carbage out, and export (save) important parts as individual NRaw clips via Resolve’s Media Management For R3D NE and also for NRaw to R3D hacked clips Resolve’s media management exports the whole clips, not only the trimmed parts, so there is no way to save only the parts of Raw footage you want to keep. Red Cine X pro just fails on the export. After starting to shoot NRaw I took a habit to view, trim, edit and save my daily footage after each shooting day, so that my 2TB card would be empty for the next day. That way I would have only my important NRaw footage stored, and also a quick daily clip of those important parts edited, graded and exported as H.265 to view at the same night. With R3D NE you either store everything you shoot as Raw, or edit something out of it and store it as H.265.

After shooting with ZR and 135mm F1.8 Plena outside for a few hours in depressing Autumn darkness, and another few inside with 35 1.4 it’s pretty clear the ZR and R3D NE have their perks. ZR feels quite small and nimble with the 35 1.4, and ok with the Plena without extra L grip. I can live without Z6iii EVF, barely. Focusing and exposing via ZR display works ok even from 20m away with the Plena at F1.8 during and after sunset. Exposing via highlights set to 245 work fine, as does the Cinema tools false color LUT. With CT LUT there is no zebras though, only with built in Rec709 LUT. The Red colors are a bit different (better?) than with NRaw and blue is not over saturated with LEDs. In low light R3D NE is clearly better than NRaw. With IPP2 pipeline grading is also a bit faster to get better results, both in SDR and HDR in Resolve. The only big downside is that neither RED Cine X Pro nor Resolve cannot export the trimmed R3D NE clips from the timeline at the moment, probably due to a bug in Red SDK. Resolve just copies the whole clips. Shooting longer periods from sticks is then a no go atm, unless you compress the raw to H.265 and save that, or edit your project straight from the CFExpress card. Copying whole 2TB to SSD is just stupid, if there is only 100-500GB of footage worth saving. Hopefully there is an update to Red SDK and the ZR could need a FW update too for some minor bugs and for H.265, which did look softer than Z6iii H.265.

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.

R3D NE, NRaw, Prores and H.265 compared by Cinema Tools. Not that much difference between R3D and NRaw, but not sure if they exposed according to this Recommended Zebra pattern values for R3D NE footage at Different ISO levels document. https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive8/ocJ930074UNE07okE3j44a40zA01/R3D_NE_datasheet_for_Zebra_pattern_(En)01.pdf

Very interesting to see Paule’s Zr vs S1ii comparison. In his Prores Raw in DaVinci Resolve video comments he said he was surprised that S1ii internal PRRaw had the same amount of sharpening and noise than H.265, which shouldn’t be the case. Could explain the 10 stop latitude. Very close to pulling the trigger on Zr, but still in doubt if 4 inch screen is as good and convenient to use than Z6iii’s EVF, where you can correct your near sight vision. Don’t want to look the Zr display from meter away now, it would get quite uncomfortable fast🤣

Absolutely agree. Since starting to shoot Raw, even pseudo one, shooting and editing have become more interesting. The only deadline that a hobbyist can have is to clear your CFExpress card every night, if you plan on shooting the next day. I have only one 2TB card, so I took a habit to trim the captured footage after every shooting day, save it to SSD, and edit a quick video out of it, so we can watch it from the big screen how the day went.

Default value of sharpening for NRaw in Resolve is defined in Project setting Camera Raw page and it seems to be 10 out 100 and you CAN set it to zero. Sharpness can be then adjusted on clip level too. With sharpness set to 10 NRaw looks clean, but calm, not over sharpened For Red Raw Resolve has Image detail that can be set to low, medium and high. Z6iii NRaw files pretty surely do not have default noice reduction when you compare same file named to NEV and R3D with R3D’s chroma NR activated.