Nikon Zr is coming

[Andrew Reid]

How about the original Sony a1?

The Z8 is a bit of a bargain, but out of the two I regret selling my a1 more, because it was smaller, lighter, and here's the kicker - better colour science. Which I'd never thought in a million years I'd say about a Sony. You also save a lot of card space by shooting in the upgraded 8K H.265 mode that looks as good as N-RAW for a quarter of the file size. E-mount saves you further money on glass and adapters as well.

If the OG a1 is similar in price to that Z8 with 24-70 bundle, I'd be tempted to go for the Sony and stick a nice small, but cheap, vintage 35mm on it.

I'd then pair that with a little Micro Four Thirds camera, maybe a good old GX80.

[BTM_Pix]

40 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

How about the original Sony a1?

Around £2300 so not a massive amount in it.

[Ken Ross]

On 11/16/2025 at 2:11 PM, ND64 said:

I wish someone in Nikon or RED explain what they did and what these codes actually do. NRAW show less purple noise at extreme underexposure but colors are all over the place. R3D NE is in a pool of purple noise, but colors are intact. 

Since the sensor is dual gain, below a certain ambient light level you should switch to the higher gain setting, ISO 6400. When you do that, presto, the noise is either gone or greatly diminished. 

[ND64]

Nikon is going to add RED profiles to their image recipes. So any of recently released Expeed7 cameras can use that for both still and video.

Flexible Picture Controls that you have to use to make these recipes doesn't support LUTs or curves. I wonder how close to RED colors they can go with that limited set of tools. 

[Ilkka Nissila]

2 hours ago, ND64 said:

Nikon is going to add RED profiles to their image recipes. So any of recently released Expeed7 cameras can use that for both still and video.

Flexible Picture Controls that you have to use to make these recipes doesn't support LUTs or curves. I wonder how close to RED colors they can go with that limited set of tools. 

Curves are available in the advanced settings when creating custom picture controls (which you can the upload as recipes). 

[Andrew Reid]

On 11/17/2025 at 11:43 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Around £2300 so not a massive amount in it.

Blimey if ever there was a GAS curing end-game camera it's the a1 for that price.

It has the spec to last until about 2050!

It's smaller than the Z8, more nimble ergonomically and has better colour science (I am not joking).

[Andrew Reid]

5 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

Curves are available in the advanced settings when creating custom picture controls (which you can the upload as recipes). 

I've been using Flexible Picture Controls in the NX software, have made some Fuji emulations for my Nikon Z f.

The latest processor Nikon cameras - Z6 III, Z F, Z8 and Z9 are the only ones that support the Flexi colour profiles.

You get plenty of control - custom curves, HSL, colour grading for shadows, mids and highs.

You have to be really careful with it though, because all the colour processing seems to be done in 8bit.

It has a somewhat brittle processing pipeline, presumably designed for speed as they have to work at 4K/120p for example on a mid-range cam.

It is not a patch on what Panasonic has done with Real-time LUTs.

But it's a start and you can get some nice results.

So far all the RED colour science and codec stuff from Nikon has a faint whiff off BRANDING EXERCISE about it.

It's not really quite authentic. R3D on the Z R is basically just NRAW.

And the LUTs are just, well... RED branded colour grades.

You can do all that yourself on a Z8 with not a RED badge in sight.

[Ninpo33]

On 11/19/2025 at 5:50 AM, Andrew Reid said:

Blimey if ever there was a GAS curing end-game camera it's the a1 for that price.

It has the spec to last until about 2050!

It's smaller than the Z8, more nimble ergonomically and has better colour science (I am not joking).

I’m in the same boat. Trying to time it so that the Sony A1 price vs features hits the sweet spot. I think we’re nearly there. 

I always talk about the Japanese auction sites but again, right now there is a promotion on Buyee and Mercari with 15% off coupons. Not sure about shipping and import tax to the UK from Japan but it’s still a great deal right now. 

Found one private party with very low shutter count and light photo use.

$2,781 after the 15% discount applied. 

tempting…

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andrew Reid]

A very good example of why used beats new yet again.

The sony a1 is now cheaper than the rumoured Sony a7 V at £2999.

So there you go... Absolutely zero reason to buy an a7 V 🙂

[ND64]

Nothing beats a jet2 holiday.. I mean Chinese prices. 

Brand new S5II for only $1100

[Danyyyel]

On 11/16/2025 at 11:11 PM, ND64 said:

I wish someone in Nikon or RED explain what they did and what these codes actually do. NRAW show less purple noise at extreme underexposure but colors are all over the place. R3D NE is in a pool of purple noise, but colors are intact. 

One thing this test shows is that the Nraw seems to have better DR and secondly the ZR has great DR/latitude. It is scoring 5 stop above and 3 to 4 stop below. So you are at 8+ to 9 stop of latitude which is very good. Very close to the Panasonic S1ii, Red raptor and for reference the Alexa LF is at 10 stops. I put the link to the video below, he has an English version sub, that is his own voice and not AI. 

 

 

[Danyyyel]

For now as a Nikon shooter, I am more inclined to shoot NRAW and do the renaming trick to R3D, than to shoot R3D as I am finding that the Nraw has more DR than the R3D and you can shoot the normal version that takes only about 370 mbs for 24 fps in 4k and 700 mbs for 6k. This is a little test of conversion of Nev to R3D. You have NEV (Nikon RAw), NEV but using the RED lut, Then the Nev to R3D renaming and finally the REDraw file. then  So I need to make a little bit more test, with skin tones etc, but they are quite close to me, even more so that even between the different red cameras like the Raptor and Komodo, their is some color difference. The yellow are a little bit more saturated and the image is a little more toward yellow in the Nikon ZR redraw R3D files. On side by side test the ZR was the more yellowish of the red camera. So it might balance out in the end. 

[ND64]

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

[Davide DB]

13 minutes ago, ND64 said:

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

Maybe with the next camera, he will retire, thank God.

[Danyyyel]

28 minutes ago, ND64 said:

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

 

14 minutes ago, Davide DB said:

Maybe with the next camera, he will retire, thank God.

Don't worry, until Nikon is selling cameras, he will be reviewing... I mean criticizing them. 

[Danyyyel]

29 minutes ago, ND64 said:

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

I saw one part when he was saying that it was a little annoying that they did not get exact time remaining for recording. The same guy said that it was totally unacceptable a cine camera did not give exact time remaining on the card. OK, it is written cine, but it is still a 2200 USD camera, and h265 by its nature is variable bit rate. Simple example on a sitting interview with a static background and the bitrate goes a lot lower, while have dynamic shot with lots of movement or movement in the shots and the bitrate goes up drastically. 

The just couldn't find any thing to say positive at the camera except about Nikon color and his luts, that he sell!!!

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, ND64 said:

Suddenly Gerald finds no problem in DR and 10 stops is good enough to declare "cameras peaked". 

R5 Mark III?  Hope/assume that's a typo and it's for the R6 III.  😱

[ND64]

For comparison its his ZR test

At 0.1 High S/N ratio, DR is 6 stops. In his R6III test its only 3. Not only he is not curious at all why its so low, but doesn't even notice the drastic fall of it (from 8.26 to 3.04). As a reviewer I would dig into the data.

I seriously feel he's not interested about what he's doing anymore. He's like "AF is good". What? How you tested that? Where is the evidence that its good? Canon website says its good, what else you know? And good for who? and why people should pay near $3k to have "good AF" when their current camera already has good AF? I assume R6III AF is "better" than R6II, but I need to see the evidence in practical situations. That's the job of someone who reviews gears for living.