Nikon Zr is coming

[Danyyyel]

6 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Of course - the Komodo was designed to be a crash camera for big productions.  Red really didn't plan for having a bunch of people using it for A cameras.  It's always been an odd one out among their lineup.  Anyway, I'd also say that it's pretty impressive that the OG Komodo, a 5+ year old camera with a (supersized)

S35 global shutter sensor is coming up about even in those tests with a brand new FF camera with rolling shutter.
Though I'd also guess that outside of that sort of over/under test, the ZR will have better apparent/usable dynamic range than the OG Komodo and maybe even vs the Komodo-X which is noticeably better than the OG.  

I think that there is almost no doubt that the S1 II will win it. 😄

They are from the same sensor and if the ZR can achieve the same as the S1ii, then it would already be very very good (RED Raptor territory). The S1ii has the DR boost mode which showed 10 stops of latitude, that is Alexa LF level, but with 27ms, which is not great at all. 

[Jahleh]

11 hours ago, Danyyyel said:

They are from the same sensor and if the ZR can achieve the same as the S1ii, then it would already be very very good (RED Raptor territory). The S1ii has the DR boost mode which showed 10 stops of latitude, that is Alexa LF level, but with 27ms, which is not great at all. 

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🤣

[ND64]

At ISO 6400, ZR is way better than Komodo X, and equal to S1ii. With noise reduction, even ISO 25600 is useable. And thats what matters for the target market. They're mostly one man with no or very limited lighting equipment. Underexposing and lifting the shadows in post is not what they usually do. Its good to have lower noise floor, but you don't want to go much down there anyway. Because despite less noise, you're still dealing with poor SN ratio, due to shot noise, which is inevitable side effect of underexposure. That's why much of R&D money in CMOS sensor industry is directed to improvement in saturation level (more room for overexposure), and solve the noise problem with AI. 

[ND64]

English audio is enabled 

https://youtu.be/uXyWiPO7DoE

 

 

[Kino]

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.

 

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

Wait, so the very small $1,800 camera has compromises when compared with a series of larger $3,000ish cameras?

I think it's useful to understand the characteristics of the camera, but for me, the more useful comparisons would be to other small cameras in the <$2,000 price range - i.e. S9, X-M5, and even maybe EOS R6 II/S5 II (though they're a bit bulkier IIRC).

[Kino]

Well, I was responding to all the comparisons with those more expensive cameras. This is your own statement:

"Though I'd also guess that outside of that sort of over/under test, the ZR will have better apparent/usable dynamic range than the OG Komodo and maybe even vs the Komodo-X which is noticeably better than the OG."

Also, for future reference, these are the current prices for the ZR and Pyxis 6K on B&H:

 

 

 

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

That's true!  I did guess that.  Apparently my guess was off, as was my memory of the ZR price.  Thanks for the reminder/correction!  😅

 

[ND64]

Optyczne published their review:

https://www.optyczne.pl/107.4-Inne_testy-Nikon_ZR_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Jakość_obrazu.html

[Simon Young]

8 hours ago, ND64 said:

Optyczne published their review:

https://www.optyczne.pl/107.4-Inne_testy-Nikon_ZR_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Jakość_obrazu.html

Yup and thanks to their as always very thorough testing they come to the conclusion that I was expecting: it has the same asymmetrical weak OLPF as the Z6iii, which is very disappointing. 

[Danyyyel]

On 10/10/2025 at 1:17 AM, Kino said:

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.

 

 

I have also been searching for the Nikon ZR DR/Latitude test, and result been a bit all over the place. I think one reason for the latitude test discrepancies is that the first reviewers were not able to use Davinci and had to use REd own software and it might have induced some errors...The Nikon Z6iii is better in the highlight than the Zr, which can't be true!!! . Their was also some talk that Nikon/RED got another stop of DR during their test/development.

Below is a test side by side with the Panasonic S1ii, which is a bit of the king in terms of DR/latitude and their might be neck and neck to half a stop of exposure latitude between both. Their are little discrepancy like light positioning that make me say that. He is at 4.5 over and 3.5 under that would give about eight stops, you could give another half stop to the S1ii in the highlight. For example, CINED gave the S1ii without DR boost a solid 9. This could be because they test at 1080p. If you reduce the size from 4k to 1080p, you might get another half a stop to a stop in the shadows as it would reduce the noise. For reference most Canons are at 7 to 8 stops of latitude, the Sony Venice is a 8 stops, the RED Raptor is at 9 and the Alexa LF is at 10 stops of latitude.  

He also has test of the highlight rolloff and the Zr looked a little better and the flickering in the shadows. Which is not present in the REDraw file, but is in the Prores one!!!

In this one, with the french tester (You can get English dub), he gets about 5 up and 3 3.5 down.

You also have this korean tester with the DR test with the Xyla chart and Imatest software. He got like 13.5 in Nlog!!! And 12.9 in REDraw. His DR test starts at around 23 minutes. Last thing is that CineD responded on their page saying they had a ZR on test for a week (% days ago) but they had some problem that they were trying to resolve with Nikon.

[Danyyyel]

10 hours ago, ND64 said:

Optyczne published their review:

https://www.optyczne.pl/107.4-Inne_testy-Nikon_ZR_-_test_trybu_filmowego_Jakość_obrazu.html

Any English version?

[Danyyyel]

Absolutely beautiful imagery. Some shots are very square, and some were asking if it was an opengate mode LOL

 

 

[Danyyyel]

Q&A from Mark Bone 

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, Danyyyel said:

Any English version?

If you're using Chrome, you can just right click on some random part of the page and select "translate to english" and it does a pretty decent job.

[Kino]

This is a good result from the Korean test of the ZR, but note that it is on a 4K timeline (whereas, the one I posted above was for 6K R3D NE on a 6K timeline):

6K or 8K on a 4K timeline will always result in a better DR performance on Imatest. Paule's test of the ZR against the S1 II was also really informative, especially when it comes to the ZR's advantage for highlight roll-off. But it is difficult to compare between his test scenario and CineD's, which uses NR to determine underexposure stops. For example, CineD also rated the Canon R1 at 9 stops latitude and equal to the S1 II. However, I'm not sure most people will see the benefit of those claimed 9 stops as they involve heavy NR.

I did see a very recent interview where the Nikon rep, Ricci Chera, showed a production version of the ZR and noted that all the testers were pre-production models. It is entirely possible that Nikon has tweaked the camera for better DR or other performance aspects and that these cameras are now making it into the hands of the consumers. Chera also implies at 10:00 that the "Z-cinema family" will fill out an entire range of cameras and lenses, which means that more Z-cinema branded products are coming to market.

 

[ND64]

15 minutes ago, Kino said:

It is entirely possible that Nikon has tweaked the camera

Its so rare with Nikon that I can say it never happens. They may fix a couple of bugs, but tweaking features and performance after announcement date and before shipping date? Very unlikely.