A test has shown all is not well with the Z6 in ProRes RAW mode to Atomos Ninja V. There seems to be significant moire and aliasing and a lack of 6K full pixel readout going on with the image.
This could be due to two reasons in my opinion:
- The image data might have to be compressed or binned in order to be transmitted via HDMI, with limited bandwidth available for the signal
- The sensor might have to run in a pixel binning mode to sample the data fast enough at the higher bit-depth (12bit compared to the usual 10bit for N-LOG)
It’s still a strange situation though, as the camera is clearly capable of a very nice 6K sensor readout in normal 10bit N-LOG mode via HDMI (YUV).
Internally the Z6 has a crisp 4K image as well, oversampled from that lovely 6K sensor readout. Hardly any moire, or any aliasing. The Z7 uses pixel binning full-time due to the much higher resolution (over 8K) sensor.
So it seems users must make a sacrifice if they are going RAW with Nikon and the Ninja V.
If you want to record LOG internally, I offer my Z-LOG picture profile via EOSHD (see this page). This does use the full width of the sensor and all pixels to create the 3840 x 2160 LOG image. You can apply the same LUTs you’d use with a similar LOG shooting camera, such as one with Canon LOG.
https://www.eoshd.com/eoshd-z-log-nikon-z7-d850/
I’ll see if I can ask Atomos and Nikon about what is going on.
My feedback for the future is very clear – if you are going to do a high bandwidth, high resolution RAW feed don’t do it over HDMI when USB C exists. In fact if you are going to do RAW at all, make internal recording the priority and externally optional – especially if you already have an XQD slot on the camera (albeit only one).
Nikon can be really incredibly stupid at times.
