Nikon Zr is coming

[ND64]

Video oriented cameras is always a niche. Especially in this economy and what we see in AI developments. Look at this pretty serious response of a pro video shooter:

I predict two years from now many of these folks will just give up. Budgets are already so low that they're bean counting the price of CFe cards they have to buy.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

21 hours ago, stephen said:

 

Once weakness Nikon Z6 III and Zr have and also Z8 is the fact that if you want the best video picture quality you have to shoot in RAW. NLog used in ProRes and x265 internal codecs is not as good as Sony or Panasonic Log profiles. x265 codec is 10bit 4:2:0. Shooting in RAW would require more time and work in post production as de-noise and lens correction have to be done in post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nyTnnbszZg

 

 

This is (for me) the biggest flaw of the camera. As I said, I saw this as a "creator camera" that could be used with caveats as a cinema camera.

These people usually have fast turnarounds and having a h265 almost done take is a must - not even counting the massive file sizes of RedRAW. Lots of them never used any RAW video even having cameras that could do it.

But probably the H265 encoding would overheat the camera pretty quickly.

[Danyyyel]

40 minutes ago, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

This is (for me) the biggest flaw of the camera. As I said, I saw this as a "creator camera" that could be used with caveats as a cinema camera.

These people usually have fast turnarounds and having a h265 almost done take is a must - not even counting the massive file sizes of RedRAW. Lots of them never used any RAW video even having cameras that could do it.

But probably the H265 encoding would overheat the camera pretty quickly.

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.

 

[ND64]

Size comparison site updated their list.

ZR vs. FX3

ZR vs. S9

And C50

lol

[Ilkka Nissila]

If I'm not mistaken, the issue is that what Nikon calls extended oversampling is not available on the ZR. Extended oversampling would mean the camera is able to resample the 6K sensor feed to 4K with full sensor width at 50-60 fps. The 24, 25, and 30 fps video is oversampled by default. So the quality from h.254, h.265 and Prores 423 HQ 4K modes should be fine as long as fps rate is 30 or below. These have much lower data rates than 6K RAW. Note that I do not have the ZR. I am just guessing that 24-30 fps 4K are oversampled without extended oversampling as it is the case in the Z8. If they are not oversampled, this could indeed be a major quality issue.

[Danyyyel]

18 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

If I'm not mistaken, the issue is that what Nikon calls extended oversampling is not available on the ZR. Extended oversampling would mean the camera is able to resample the 6K sensor feed to 4K with full sensor width at 50-60 fps. The 24, 25, and 30 fps video is oversampled by default. So the quality from h.254, h.265 and Prores 423 HQ 4K modes should be fine as long as fps rate is 30 or below. These have much lower data rates than 6K RAW. Note that I do not have the ZR. I am just guessing that 24-30 fps 4K are oversampled without extended oversampling as it is the case in the Z8. If they are not oversampled, this could indeed be a major quality issue.

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.   

 

[Jahleh]

Didn’t the ZR have a setting for H.265 NR  in the menus? Could it be be that on pre production models it is set to stonger setting than on other Z bodies. 
To my eye H.265 on Z6iii is good, better than S5ii’s 4:2:0. 
Thought about Z8 too, but according to Cinematools Z8’s 4k120p has worse quality than Z6iii’s in DX mode, and I find the ability to crop 1.5x quite handy. Z8’s 4k 2.3x would need changing some of my lenses to wider ones. 
 

Played more with NEV to R3D trick, and still prefer Nikon colours and Raw controls to Red. In addition R3D Media management in Resolve does not work, it does not export trimmed clips. If you trim the NEV clips and export, NEV to R3D trick does not work any more. Usually fill a 2TB card in one day, so working trim is a must to save only the important parts. 
 

Tried ProresRaw too and file sizes are just huge and Raw controls not so good. With NRaw I can color correct basicly from the Raw panel quickly.