Zr: what happened?

n8rv
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p.3 #1 · Zr: what happened?

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.

May 06, 2026 at 09:52 AM

n8rv
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p.3 #2 · 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.

Part II: Low light / nighttime

May 12, 2026 at 11:17 AM

PixiPhotography
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p.3 #3 · Zr: what happened?

n8rv wrote:
Part II: Low light / nighttime

You know what's sad? I knew which was the Nikon in the video based on the consistent AF jumping/jitters. I've experienced that before on a few other Nikon cameras where the AF jittered. At first I thought it was the camera trying to focus on the waves but it did it through each scene.

Sep 17, 2026 at 12:05 AM

wind30
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p.3 #4 · Zr: what happened?

I bought the zr for photography this week. Mainly for the lcd screen… the screen is gorgeous and makes shooting quite fun.

My other camera is z8 and a7r5.

Sep 17, 2026 at 02:11 AM

ilkka_nissila
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p.3 #5 · Zr: what happened?

PixiPhotography wrote:
You know what's sad? I knew which was the Nikon in the video based on the consistent AF jumping/jitters. I've experienced that before on a few other Nikon cameras where the AF jittered. At first I thought it was the camera trying to focus on the waves but it did it through each scene.

I've mostly noticed that the Z8 does very well in daytime full-time AF, where I typically shoot in SDR with a small aperture (due to bright lighting conditions) instead of using N-Log and an ND filter. Typically for bright daylight I've used ISO 64 and Active D-Lighting on Normal or OFF depending on whether I expect to be shooting in backlight or not. In daylight (window-lit) indoor conditions I've also shot using the Z8 with the 70-200/2.8 S wide open on a walking human subject and there was no pulsing of the AF, it was just tracking perfectly all the way through. I've not noticed any anomalous behavior in the AF system in these conditions, using lenses such as 35/1.8, 50/1.8, 24-70/2.8 S, or 70-200/2.8 S, when there has been a clear human subject or several such subjects in the frame. I've shot using a tripod or gimbal most of the time, as I don't like the look of hand-held video.

However, when I've shot in twilight conditions or around sunset, when artificial lights mix with skylight, I've typically used N-Log with ISO 800 to 6400, and in those conditions the AF of the Z8 does not quite work as reliably as during daylight, and I suspect simply that the log profile due to its low contrast makes the work of the AF system harder, and also because compared to SDR, the main subject area of the image is underexposed several stops if metering normally. Additionally when having to work at higher ISO (4000 etc.) the low light leads to a more noisy image which makes it harder to maintain consistent focus. However, in these conditions, using fast lenses such as f/1.8 to f/2.8 I've had mostly good results videographing people as the main subjects. I think the key is giving the image enough light to work with and to use lenses which produce a clear in- vs. out-of-focus contrast.

I've also recently tried to make some wildife video, mostly with the 100-400/4.5-5.6 S, with subjects such as red-throated divers and deer. With the deer, the challenge there is that they tend to stay far away from people when it is bright out there, and show up at closer distances and with more activity during sunrise/sunset and the hours on both sides of those times. Thus there is typically low light. I've shot these situations with N-Log (Prores 422 HQ) and it is quite common that the AF starts to hunt as the light gets low, with ISO 6400+ required. I've found the best method is usually manual focus in such conditions. I might try SDR to give the sensor and AF system enough light and contrast to work with. Nikon does say in the manual that in N-Log mode "The camera may have trouble focusing using autofocus but this does not indicate a malfunction." Generally, animal detection AF doesn't work as well as people detection AF, the latter being very reliable in comparison. This is understandable because animals come in such different shapes.

For static subjects and subjects where there is no need for continuous focusing, I would just use manual focus and choose the aperture so that the sharpness of the main subject or subjects can be adequately achieved.

Now that was regarding my experiences with the Z8. On the Zf, I've shot N-Log h.265 video in late evening but before twilight conditions and experienced some more slight variation in autofocus in situations where the Z8 would still focus consistently. I don't know why this is the case, perhaps it's to do with the slower (22 ms vs. 15 ms in video) readout of the sensor data, or it could be that the Zf does not get quite the high-performance code that the Z8. I know the ZR has a faster readout (9 ms?) than either the Z8 or Zf in video mode, and this might give it some advantage in tracking moving subjects, but it's also reported to be a slightly more noisy sensor, and that may cause some pulsing in low light.

Anyway, I'm of the view that you've got to work with what you have in your hands, the good and bad, and choosing to use manual focus in low light conditions or with subject matter that does not include clear people within subject recognition range is probably often the right thing to do when recording video with Nikon cameras. I don't have a ZR yet as like many people I have trouble accepting the data storage needs of raw video and hope Nikon can mitigate some of the h.265 and Prores quality concerns. I do note that N-RAW files in the ZR are smaller than N-RAW in the Z8 (due to 6K vs. 8K) and might be a bit more manageable especially in Normal mode. However, I really like the handling, screen, and the idea of having 32-bit float recording of audio of the ZR, and think it would make a very good gimbal camera, and I could dedicate it to video and just keep my Z8 and Zf configured for still photography. (Yes there are separate settings for video and still modes but somehow some settings carry over between the two modes (such as VR) and I just don't like having to do major reconfigurations of settings if I can avoid it; it often results in something going wrong.)

When shooting video in manual focus mode, I have used AF to focus once and then leave it there (typically this can work at smaller apertures), I can zoom into the image on the Z8 and adjust focus, use focus peaking as aid, though I find its sensitivity required frequent adjustment to avoid completely cluttering the screen with color, and to get the right information for the shoot, and spending time on adjusting settings can result in lost shots when doing documentary-style shooting of real world events. I've read that the ZR does not allow zooming-in of the display during video recording, is this really the case, and in that case it's a major omission and Nikon hopefully can fix it in the 2.00 update. There should not be any reason why this is not possible as they have done it on other Expeed 7 cameras. I definitely think Nikon should be able to make manual focusing easier by improving the focus aid tools particularly in video mode. Some have had trouble with the Z8 when zooming-in because the viewfinder image is quite "jumpy" (in stills mode, probably also in video) and this might require new generation hardware to fix (Z9 II/Z8 II), but I recall reading that the Z6 III is less problematic in this area. Since I mostly use a tripod when I need manual focusing, it has not been a big concern for me.

Sep 17, 2026 at 03:18 AM

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