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Nikon Z6 + Atomos Ninja Star footage


FHDcrew
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I just wanted to share some footage I captured recently to demonstrate the quality one can get with a used Nikon Z6 and an Atomos Ninja Star. Oversampled 1080p, 10 bit prores, nice log curve with good color and solid DR, and a really good grading workflow in Davinci Resolve. A few shots were with the internal FLAT picture profile but the majority of the shots were in NLOG. This camera combo is really awesome for the price, and the Ninja Star keeps things light and compact!  Also useable autofocus, full frame IQ, for pretty cheap!

 

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1 hour ago, TomTheDP said:

Looks beautiful. Downsampled 4k to HD is hard to distinguish from HD imo. I'd recommend rendering in 4k to get that extra YouTube bitrate. 

Yeah, I may re-upload. I realize that. Except I deleted the RAW footage, I plan to upload another example and will upload in 4k, then will post it here. 

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5 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

Did you mean downsampled 4k to HD is hard to distinguish from 4k?

I have found that to be true in the past.  I've shot quite a number of resolution tests with the GH5 and have struggled to be able to tell which shots were which, even when I knew which were which, until I found a particular tiny detail in the frame that was the giveaway.  If I wasn't pixel peeing then there's no way I'd be able to tell.

I've also found that you can easily compensate for quite significant resolution differences by just adding some sharpening in post.  The resolution purists are mostly just judging sharpness, not resolution.

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22 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

Yes this is what I meant to say. 

I definately agree.  Sure there is a small difference, but it's quite small, and if anything that difference is more like in 4k you can see too many pores on the skin, with oversampled 1080p it looks almost the same but just enough softness to add a bit of organic mojo to the image.

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People. When uploading to Youtube, ignore all the downsampling crap. It only applies if you're not compressing the footage again and again. It sounds good on paper but even scaling 1080p to 4K and then watching that "1080p" as a 4K video on youtube gives it a higher visual quality. 

All the pixel binning and noise reduction gets washed away because the compression that youtube uses makes the fine detail into mush anyway.

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7 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

Plot twist time...

Not only was the footage oversampled 1080p and not 4k, but much of the 1080p source footage was stabilized in-post and thus scaled up further.  Still looks solid on my end.

haha, you're really living up to your username! 😉

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3 hours ago, The Dancing Babamef said:

People. When uploading to Youtube, ignore all the downsampling crap. It only applies if you're not compressing the footage again and again. It sounds good on paper but even scaling 1080p to 4K and then watching that "1080p" as a 4K video on youtube gives it a higher visual quality. 

All the pixel binning and noise reduction gets washed away because the compression that youtube uses makes the fine detail into mush anyway.

There's a lot of opinions about how good YT is or isn't, but I'm not so sure.

Here's a video from ARRI that is "only" uploaded in 1080p, but just looks fantastic...

I own both the OG BMPCC and BMMCC cameras which are native 1080p sensors, and even shooting in RAW or Prores HQ and processing them in post, I still seriously struggle to get an image as detailed as the above, even though the above has been seriously compressed by YT.  The BM 1080p cameras have a slightly softer pixel-to-pixel transition, simply because they're not 1080p 4:4:4, whereas downsampling cameras are all going to be 1080p 4:4:4, and YT has enough quality at 1080p to show these differences.

With my GH5, the difference in resolution between the 4K mode that's downsampled from the 5K sensor and the 4K 1:1 mode is definitely noticeable, even though the 4K 1:1 is a very small crop and even if you adjust ISO, SS and aperture to create the cleanest and sharpest images possible.

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6 hours ago, kye said:

There's a lot of opinions about how good YT is or isn't, but I'm not so sure.

Here's a video from ARRI that is "only" uploaded in 1080p, but just looks fantastic...

I own both the OG BMPCC and BMMCC cameras which are native 1080p sensors, and even shooting in RAW or Prores HQ and processing them in post, I still seriously struggle to get an image as detailed as the above, even though the above has been seriously compressed by YT.  The BM 1080p cameras have a slightly softer pixel-to-pixel transition, simply because they're not 1080p 4:4:4, whereas downsampling cameras are all going to be 1080p 4:4:4, and YT has enough quality at 1080p to show these differences.

With my GH5, the difference in resolution between the 4K mode that's downsampled from the 5K sensor and the 4K 1:1 mode is definitely noticeable, even though the 4K 1:1 is a very small crop and even if you adjust ISO, SS and aperture to create the cleanest and sharpest images possible.

Shallow depth of field with nice lighting and super sharp lenses is maybe not the best representation of the struggle of HD compression on YouTube. Throw more movement, shadows, longer DOF and it really starts to fall apart IMO, at least compared to 4k. 10 vs 50mbps is going to make a difference. 

I have also noticed some content such as big studio film trailers seem to have a different quality HD than the standard uploader. 

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2 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

Shallow depth of field with nice lighting and super sharp lenses is maybe not the best representation of the struggle of HD compression on YouTube. Throw more movement, shadows, longer DOF and it really starts to fall apart IMO, at least compared to 4k. 10 vs 50mbps is going to make a difference. 

I have also noticed some content such as big studio film trailers seem to have a different quality HD than the standard uploader. 

My comments are about resolution, in the context of downsampling, not bitrate.

2 hours ago, The Dancing Babamef said:

that's literally ARRI. 😆  😆

Yes, but if your comments about downsampling were true, then it wouldn't matter if God himself uploaded a video to YT, it would still be........

13 hours ago, The Dancing Babamef said:

washed away because the compression that youtube uses makes the fine detail into mush anyway

But, it's not, and therefore, it isn't.

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1 hour ago, kye said:

My comments are about resolution, in the context of downsampling, not bitrate.

Yes, but if your comments about downsampling were true, then it wouldn't matter if God himself uploaded a video to YT, it would still be........

But, it's not, and therefore, it isn't.

Shallow DOF makes images look higher res, which in my opinion makes that example a poor one if you are saying YouTube 1080p compression doesn't degrade your initial capture. 

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5 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

Shallow DOF makes images look higher res, which in my opinion makes that example a poor one if you are saying YouTube 1080p compression doesn't degrade your initial capture. 

When did I state that YT doesn't degrade the image capture?

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36 minutes ago, kye said:

When did I state that YT doesn't degrade the image capture?

Yeah Kye I never got that from your posts.  My whole point was that downsampled 1080p looks very similar to 4k even when viewed on a 4k screen, and because of that fact, the Atomos Ninja Star makes the Nikon Z6 a pretty great camera in 2022, as you get a great image but much less inconvenience compared to most external recorder/monitors.

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10 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

Yeah Kye I never got that from your posts.  My whole point was that downsampled 1080p looks very similar to 4k even when viewed on a 4k screen, and because of that fact, the Atomos Ninja Star makes the Nikon Z6 a pretty great camera in 2022, as you get a great image but much less inconvenience compared to most external recorder/monitors.

Plus you get a lot of popular 2022 convenience features at a very low price point. You really can’t get full frame 10 bit PDAF and IBIS for this cheap otherwise

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