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Upload & Sell: On
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ilkka_nissila wrote:
(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.
The blurriness was probably YouTube starting the stream at a lower resolution. I've noticed that happen more often lately with YouTube videos and find myself having to manually force the resolution to its highest. Probably a mix of increased traffic and their servers fighting to keep up.
As for the AF pulsing, yes... I decided to leave full-time AF on. I think AF performance is a factor worth considering to an extent. Maybe it would be more of a fair comparison if I had native Z-mount glass on the ZR or just relied on MF but... one of the selling points for the ZR that has been pushed is its "seamless" and "near perfect" adaptability to AF E-mount glass. And I haven't found it to be so smooth overall, between twitchy AF and IBIS completely failing to detect the lens and activate at certain times. I think and hope, aside from some AF pulsing, the dynamic/tonal range and color reproduction comparison comes across.
ilkka_nissila wrote:
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. ...Show more →
Yes, good points and this is part of the driving force behind this video. I think the target user for this tier of camera will mostly be recording content for delivery via YouTube, Instagram, and similar platforms, rather than in larger productions that may have budget for their higher-tier "siblings" (Komodo, Raptor, Burano, Venice, etc) for digital or physical release. So when you factor in all that, how much of a difference can you tell after uploading these videos to YouTube? As long as you're not using a heavily degraded codec, pushing a sensor past its capabilities, or overcooking the footage in post, can any and all of these cameras produce good results? On the other side of the coin: How far can sensor A vs. B be pushed? How well does codec A vs. codec B handle recovery if exposure couldn't be perfect onsite? I think some of these can still come across, even via compressed delivery. Maybe an even more useful comparison than a bright, evenly lit scenario with "perfect" exposure where the differences may be less noticeable.
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