fredmiranda.com
Login

Moderated by: Fred Miranda
Username  

  New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site
  New Feature: SMS Notification alert
  New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist
  

FM Forums | Nikon Forum | Join Upload & Sell

1              3       end
  

Zr: what happened?

  
 
ZeeMike
Offline

Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #1 · Zr: what happened?


It's the same feeling about the ZR for me - I'm on the fence.
The image quality is second to none. The screen is second to none (unless you go for a high end external monitor) However, the insatiable hunger of the R3D NE codec is indeed making me shoot less than I intended to. It chows through memory like there's no tomorrow, even if you clear all the RAW files after each projects. The projects are the size of a truck and with the current memory costs the workflow becomes very expensive to maintain.

I got the ZR as a B cam for the RED Komodo to, ironically, use the Komodo less. In the end, the ZR made me use the Komodo MORE as suddenly the ELQ and LQ R3D workflow is much more manageable...

So... I guess the ZR made me fall in love with the classic RED more?



Apr 29, 2026 at 01:01 PM
ronno
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #2 · Zr: what happened?


@ZeeMike

I’m guessing sales would improve vastly if they finally sort this data rate issue.

When looking at footage shot with this camera, I’m still not seeing any obvious upside that would merit plowing thousands into storage and memory cards.



Apr 30, 2026 at 12:28 PM
n8rv
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #3 · Zr: what happened?


ronno wrote:
When looking at footage shot with this camera, I’m still not seeing any obvious upside that would merit plowing thousands into storage and memory cards.


That's one of my biggest gripes. Maybe a few months ago it would've been less of an issue. But now that the slop generation and cognitive decline acceleration machine (aka "AI") boom has made memory and storage prices skyrocket, data rates are most definitely an issue.

Yes, the R3D footage from my ZR looks great, but once I upload to YouTube in (at most) 4K, will it look 500% better than the XAVCS-I footage from my A7V to warrant 500% the file sizes and associated long term storage costs?

No.

It's unfortunate timing for Nikon really. They'll have to adapt by offering competitive, high quality, lower bitrate codec options soon or there'll be a lot more ZRs flooding the used market.





Edited on Apr 30, 2026 at 12:59 PM · View previous versions



Apr 30, 2026 at 12:53 PM
RustyRus
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #4 · Zr: what happened?


n8rv wrote:
That's one of my biggest gripes. Maybe a few months ago it would've been less of an issue. But now that the slop generation and cognitive decline acceleration machine (aka "AI") boom has made memory and storage prices skyrocket, data rates are most definitely an issue.

Yes, the R3D footage from my ZR looks great, but once I upload to YouTube in (at most) 4K, will it look 500% better than the XAVCS-I footage from my A7V to warrant 500% the file sizes and associated long term storage costs?

No.




It will if you jacked up your exposures and need to manipulate in post



Apr 30, 2026 at 12:58 PM
ronno
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #5 · Zr: what happened?


Test I have seen indicate that Sony H.265 log (on A7V, A1, etc) has more dynamic range than the ZR in red raw.
At 1/10 or 1/15 the storage requirements, and can be shot on SD cards, etc.

RustyRus wrote It will if you jacked up your exposures and need to manipulate in post :
n8rv wrote:


Edited on Apr 30, 2026 at 04:10 PM · View previous versions



Apr 30, 2026 at 02:27 PM
n8rv
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #6 · Zr: what happened?


I can share some footage from my own comparisons later. I've only found that it's marginally better at recovering highlights in some situations and much worse at recovering shadows in all situations. There's only so much DR they can squeeze out of that Z6III sensor.

All things being the same and well-lit, sure. I do think the ZR's R3D footage does have a certain "sauce" that makes it look more pleasing with less effort. But I don't know that it's got 5X the sauce to be worth 5X the memory costs.

Hopefully Nikon can find a way to address the bitrate issue and/or this dumb AI bubble bursts, so memory and storage prices come back down to reasonable levels. Not holding my breath for the latter.



Apr 30, 2026 at 02:39 PM
ZeeMike
Offline

Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #7 · Zr: what happened?


It really grinds my gears that our profession suffers not only from the fear of generative AI "takin-ur-jobz" but also because of the insanity it has driven the memory market towards while providing zero true benefit to creative market as a whole. People simply don't like generative AI and it helps nobody. Sora shut doors already, I hope others will follow and we can all enjoy this whole thing pop into oblivion.

I want cheap memory again...



Apr 30, 2026 at 11:39 PM
ilkka_nissila
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #8 · Zr: what happened?


Since raw video doesn't have much noise reduction applied, h265 10-bit log video can show as having more dynamic range but the comparison is meaningful only if the h265 video also has equal or more detail than the raw video being compared to.

ronno wrote:
Test I have seen indicate that Sony H.265 log (on A7V, A1, etc) has more dynamic range than the ZR in red raw.
At 1/10 or 1/15 the storage requirements, and can be shot on SD cards, etc.

RustyRus wrote It will if you jacked up your exposures and need to manipulate in post :



May 01, 2026 at 09:25 AM
n8rv
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #9 · Zr: what happened?


Here's a very quick and dirty test. Very high dynamic range situation with bright sunlight outside the window and no artificial lighting inside. First "overexposing" (exposing for middle grey in the color checker card), then underexposing (just trying to make sure things outside the window don't look blown out), then attempting to do some recovery for each.

A7V footage is XAVCS-I 4K (downsampled from 7K) at 24fps. Files were roughly 500MB.
ZR footage R3D NE 6K at 24fps. Files were roughly 2.75GB.
4K Timeline in Resolve.




May 01, 2026 at 04:52 PM
ronno
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #10 · Zr: what happened?


Thanks for your efforts!

In my mind, the main two questions seem to be:

1. Does the Nikon Red footage justify requiring 10-15x the storage space / memory card usage.

2. Is there a real "red color science" advantage, or not.

If anyone has links to address #2, feel free to post them.



May 01, 2026 at 05:19 PM
 


Search in Used Dept. 

ISO1600
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #11 · Zr: what happened?


Any advantage the R3D brings is only worth it if you need it. Basically if you shoot RAW photos and enjoy editing them, you might enjoy messing with RAW video.
I enjoy shooting JPG and doing very minor edits. I have ZERO desire to mess with RAW or even LOG video.



May 01, 2026 at 09:25 PM
n8rv
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #12 · Zr: what happened?


ronno wrote:
Thanks for your efforts!

In my mind, the main two questions seem to be:

1. Does the Nikon Red footage justify requiring 10-15x the storage space / memory card usage.

2. Is there a real "red color science" advantage, or not.

If anyone has links to address #2, feel free to post them.


I think R3D (and Raw video in general) is a nice to have but, unless you have a real professional need for ultimate flexibility in grading, it’s not a must have for most people.

A robust enough h.264/5 10-bit log codec is still plenty flexible and still very widely used by professionals.

“Color science” is a whole other can of worms.

This is an interesting video about “color science” vs. “color accuracy”, which also briefly touches on Nikon Red.
https://youtu.be/pl_nZG_ziRE



May 01, 2026 at 11:32 PM
Alistair1
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #13 · Zr: what happened?


https://youtu.be/tnYtTLAvom0?si=YZf38fL0BM1E6W29
Compared to Lumix, Canon and Sony.



May 02, 2026 at 06:17 AM
n8rv
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #14 · Zr: what happened?


Alistair1 wrote:
https://youtu.be/tnYtTLAvom0
Compared to Lumix, Canon and Sony.


Granted, most of these YouTubers approach their content with some level of bias, but this one was laughable. As someone who owns both, his “best” and “worst” cameras, it is an absolutely ridiculous ranking



May 02, 2026 at 09:22 AM
Alistair1
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #15 · Zr: what happened?


n8rv wrote:
Granted, most of these YouTubers approach their content with some level of bias, but this one was laughable. As someone who owns both, his “best” and “worst” cameras, it is an absolutely ridiculous ranking


Presumably he is biased towards Canon and Lumix. Though his opinions are also probably heavily influenced by his personal needs, likes and experiences. As indeed are yours and mine.



May 02, 2026 at 10:45 PM
Alistair1
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #16 · Zr: what happened?


He has just posted a follow-up video in which he says more about why he likes the ZR and also some dislikes.






May 04, 2026 at 08:15 PM
ronno
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #17 · Zr: what happened?


After basic post, they look like they could’ve been shot with any number of cameras, no?


May 05, 2026 at 10:31 AM
n8rv
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #18 · Zr: what happened?


ronno wrote:
After basic post, they look like they could’ve been shot with any number of cameras, no?


Yes.

Here's another quick and dirty comparison. Same lens. Same VND. Same conditions. Same settings. First few shots (35mm) are handheld, the next few (16mm) are on tripod. No LUTs or fancy grading. Just matching exposure as closely as possible and converting to Rec709 with the same Color Space Transform in Resolve.





May 05, 2026 at 06:09 PM
ronno
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #19 · Zr: what happened?


Interesting – thank you n8rv.
The other side-by-side comparisons I’ve seen yield similar results.



May 05, 2026 at 08:35 PM
ilkka_nissila
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #20 · Zr: what happened?


n8rv wrote:
Yes.

Here's another quick and dirty comparison. Same lens. Same VND. Same conditions. Same settings. First few shots (35mm) are handheld, the next few (16mm) are on tripod. No LUTs or fancy grading. Just matching exposure as closely as possible and converting to Rec709 with the same Color Space Transform in Resolve.




(Edited.) It seems my browser was causing some problems with viewing the footage; on my desktop the footage looked really blurry for a lot of the timeline of the video, on another computer (on my laptop) it looks OK, although in some of the footage the focus is still twitching around a bit. For the future, avoiding full-time autofocusing when making these videos would help the viewer assess image quality as the focus would stay still instead of shifting back and forth.

If the purpose of the video is to show how the tonal range and colors look after matching them, I get the point. However, if one is to be able to evaluate image quality as a whole, including detail, youtube and the viewing software seem to cause serious difficulties in this area, I suppose it could also be affected by how much traffic youtube has at a point in time, display drivers etc.

Thanks for making these comparisons anyway. I think ultimately one major issue is that when distributing footage for general audience on free platforms, there is considerable image quality loss on the way, much more than is affecting stills viewed on the internet. Starting with high-quality footage can help, but the hosting platform and viewing software can make the final viewing experience highly variable and to some extent out of the viewer's control, and talking about high fidelity aspects of video footage may seem like a moot point. For delivery on more professional platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, etc. I suppose the benefits of starting from really high quality codec can be more obvious. But for Nikon, maybe the ZR has a bit of an identity problem, sitting between hybrids and movie cameras, not quite meeting the needs of a lot of users who cannot afford to shoot raw video but would like the compactness and other aspects of the camera (such as big screen, 32-bit audio, silence without fan, light weight, adaptability across lens mounts etc.). Hopefully Nikon can address the issues in firmware updates, making the ZR more generally usable for the typical user who does not have RED cameras and work in the cinema industry.

On my own tests of uploading video to youtube, I've noticed the audio quality suffers quite a bit as well, and viewing the same file on my 4K TV directly from a USB drive looks and sounds better than when viewed through youtube. It would be nice if the platform offered a high-quality option (also for 4K) where the viewing experience was more uniform and more similar to when viewing and listening to the original exported file. On the other hand I get it that this would bring up costs. On streaming platforms such as Amazon, Netflix, etc. I have noticed that the image quality has been variable in the past (during the covid pandemic especially), but today it seems more uniform and it doesn't bother me as much as it did, comparing to bluray, but the audio on bluray is still noticeably better than on the streaming platforms. If the delivery of the online platforms improves in video and audio quality over time, then it may make some sense to move to higher-quality capture formats such as raw video for more people making videos, at least if the memory prices return to their previous trajectory of improved capacity/price over the long term.



May 06, 2026 at 05:37 AM
1              3       end






FM Forums | Nikon Forum | Join Upload & Sell

1              3       end
    
 

You are not logged in. Login or Register