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The Nikon ZR has a few video quality surprises
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Photo: Mitchell Clark
We're finishing up our review of the Nikon ZR, the company's video-focused camera with the...
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
Photo: Mitchell Clark
We're finishing up our review of the Nikon ZR, the company's video-focused camera with the same 26MP partially stacked full-frame sensor found in the Z6III, and, as part of our testing, have put it in front of our studio test scene. We've captured a load of video stills to test out the camera's many, many video modes.
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As with the Z6III, the ZR's compressed footage is very detailed in both 4K and 5.4K. However, Nikon has clearly changed how it processes this footage, and it appears to be applying less, or more subtle, sharpening than the Z6III.
Compared to hybrid stills/video cameras , the ZR has similar levels of detail to the similar pixel-count Panasonic S1II, as well as to the Canon EOS R6 III's oversampled 4K mode. However, the Canon's 7K open gate footage provides much more detail than the ZR's 5.4K capture, though it will take up more storage and has to be edited before delivery. The highest-resolution footage you can get from the ZR offers more detail than the Sony a7 V's oversampled 4K footage. That also initially appears to be the case if you compare the cameras' 4K output, but the ZR's has more aliasing, so it's not necessarily a better representation of the scene. It's also worth noting that the ZR comes in at a substantially lower price point than those cameras (though with a corresponding decrease in stills capabilities).
While bumping up to 60p doesn't come with a cost to field of view or detail, if you want to shoot in 120p, the camera will have to crop down to an APS-C region of the sensor. This results in less detail being captured, though it's the same amount as captured by the APS-C 24p mode.
Three flavors of Raw
The Nikon ZR supports internal Raw recording to three different formats: N-Raw, ProRes Raw, and R3D NE, a format currently unique to it. They all have the common caveats associated with Raw recording – using it will require post-processing (often using specific editing software), and the difference between Raw and Log isn't anything like as great as the difference between Raw and JPEG for stills – but for those that need it, it's available.
As you'd expect, the ZR's three flavors of Raw capture comparable amounts of detail at their 6K settings, though their default LUTs offer fairly different foundations to build your own grade on. Despite the similar image quality each version of Raw offers, there are substantial differences between what it's like to shoot them; we'll be posting an article comparing the three formats very soon.
Noise reduction
Some ZR users, including cinematographer and YouTuber Philip Bloom, have noticed that the ZR appears to have more heavy-handed noise reduction than the Z6III, resulting in a softer image when shooting H.265 with the standard or N-Log response curves. While our single-frame test doesn't show that the ZR's H.265 mode captures noticeably less detail than the Z6III's (though there is decidedly less sharpening), we wouldn't be surprised if Nikon decided to increase noise reduction for the ZR, given the controversy that the Z6III gathered for having relatively noisy and sometimes flickering shadows when shooting Log. The sensor shared by these two cameras has relatively high noise in the deep shadows that Log-shooting exploits, so we suspect Nikon may be trying to compensate for that.
We plan on taking a closer look at the Z6III's footage versus the ZR's soon.
During our testing, we've shot various projects with the ZR and have been pleased with the footage we've got from it. Our test scene doesn't turn up any major surprises with regard to its image quality, but does reinforce the idea that shooting Raw with this camera will take some careful consideration when it comes to picking which format is the best for your particular usage.
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