Nikon Zr is coming

[zerocool22]

3 hours ago, ND64 said:

And now the ZRc:

Fourth quarter of 2026 is too late, or something lost in translation. Z30/Z50II sensor at that point is lame. No IBIS is shame, and 4k60 with crop on APSC is unacceptable. But why its not Z30II? Doesn't make sense.

End of 2026? Djeez, even released today it would be underwelming.

[Ilkka Nissila]

5 hours ago, ND64 said:

And now the ZRc:

Fourth quarter of 2026 is too late, or something lost in translation. Z30/Z50II sensor at that point is lame. No IBIS is shame, and 4k60 with crop on APSC is unacceptable. But why its not Z30II? Doesn't make sense.

Sounds like random people making stuff up; the ZR has a fast read time in video mode (for a relatively low-cost mirrorless camera); it doesn't make any sense to make a video-first camera based on a sensor that is more than 10 years old and has a very slow read time. I couldn't find any reports of it on NR.

[ND64]

3 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

it doesn't make any sense to make a video-first camera based on a sensor that is more than 10 years old and has a very slow read time. 

And with SD card, no RAW video. Unless heavily cropped 4k30. 

[Jahleh]

Ok, first 2 week trip behind with the ZR, 35mm F1.4, 50mm F1.2 and 135mm F1.8 Plena and here are some thoughts about the ZR.

First the good sides. The ZR screen worked well enough for nailing focus and exposure, even when shooting into shadows in bright daylight, but you may want to max the screen brightness. Zooming into the image with the zoom lever was handier than with Z6iii plus and minus buttons.

Even with screen brightness maxed occasionally battery lasted about as well as Z6iii with it’s EVF on normal brightness. Had to use 2nd battery only a few times during 4-5 hour shooting days in cold, 0 to 10C conditions.

Brought also the Smallgrip L cage with me, but did not use it, as it makes the ZR body taller than Z6iii and about similar weight. Even with 1kg lenses ZR felt quite comfortable to use and hold, but as a climber my fingers are not the weakest.
I missed the Z6iii EVF a bit, but used now also different shooting angles and heights more due to the bigger screen being handier than EVF for that.

32bit float saved the few clipped audios I had pretty well, even though I don’t know if it is true 32bit pipeline from Rode wireless go mic to the ZR. Still, the audio sounded a bit better than what I have gotten with Z6iii and Rode.

Exposing clips with R3D NE took at first a bit more time than with NRaw, but by using high zebras set to 245, waveform, and Cinematools false color and Rec.709 clipping LUTs it was quite easy to avoid crushed blacks and clipped highlights.

R3D NE has manual WB, so I took always a picture first and set the WB by using the picture as preset. It worked pretty well, but not perfectly every time.

Shot also NRaw in between to compare, but used auto A1 WB for it. It seems the auto WB did not always work perfectly either, but it was relatively easy to get R3D NE and NRaw to match WB wise in post.

In highlights R3D NE clips earlier than NRaw and it was clearly seen in the zebras and waveform. Still with R3D NE there was not much need to over expose and even with under exposing I needed to use NR only in a couple of clips, where I under exposed too much.

On last year’s trip with Z6iii, when it didn’t have the 1.10 FW yet, that improved the shadow noise pattern, I needed to use NR in many clips, until I realised I could raise high zebras from 245 to 255 without clipping.

With R3D NE and NRaw 4 camera buttons and one lens button was enough. I had 3D LUT and WB added to My menu and that mapped to a button, so it was quite fast to change display LUTs or WB. WB mapped directly to a button or added in i menu won’t let you set the WB by taken picture as preset. WB se to i menu let’s you measure the white point and set that though.

In post I preferred the R3D NE colors over NRaw in almost all of the clips I took, except in few clips where NRaw had more information in the highlights.

Changing NRaw to R3D with NEV to R3D hack brought NRaw grading closer to R3D NE, but they were still not exactly the same. NRaw as NRaw seemed to have more blueish image in some of the clips due to the blue oversaturation issue it has, but the NEV to R3D hack fixes that.

Then the bad sides. After coming home I picked the Z6iii, looked through it’s EVF, felt all of it’s buttons and thought, this is still the better camera, a proper one. Z6iii has also focus limiter and mech sutter which both I missed during the trip.

The worst part became pretty clear after every shooting day. Not the R3D NE file sizes itself, but the lack of software support to be able to save only the trimmed parts of R3D NE clips. Currently Davinci Resolve saves the whole clips without trims, even though NRaw works just fine, and Red Cine x pro gives an error during R3D trim export.

If you happen to fill 2TB card a day with R3D NE, you need to save now everything. I saved like 6TB of footage from this trip when it could have been only 600GB. If this does not get fixed I could as well shoot NRaw with Z6iii and get rid of the damn ZR. Changing trimmed NEV files to R3D does not work either, as Resolve does not import the files. ZR is fun to shoot, no doubt about it, but it’s R3D NE workflow is almost unusable at the moment, at least for my use. 

[ArashM]

2 hours ago, Jahleh said:

Ok, first 2 week trip behind with the ZR, 35mm F1.4, 50mm F1.2 and 135mm F1.8 Plena and here are some thoughts about the ZR.

Excellent insight, Thank you for the write up!