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Cinematch?

Let's take a moment to appreciate the old treasure that is the Nikon Z6 OG, which couldn't have aged better even if it were deposited in an oak barrel in Scotland for the past 6 years. First of all it is £650 now. Secondly of course it is full frame whereas a lot of the other options for this price are crop sensor. Many of the other mirrorless full frame cameras have aged quite badly. The Panasonic S1 is superseded by a smaller cheaper camera with better AF. The Canon EOS R classic has been superseded twice by the R6 and R6 II. The formula of Z6 on the other hand has only merely been tweaked with the Z6 II that doesn't add a huge amount extra, because it just doesn't need to. And the Z8 / Z9 are insanely more money than £650. I like that it has such nice colour science out the box. It also has better custom picture profile management than Canon. The IBIS is superior to the Canon EOS R3 in every way, let alone the EOS R5 or R6 II. The 4K video and 6K sensor is superb in low light, better than the 8K+ stuff. And despite now being very cheap the top LCD and enormous, detailed EVF hold up very favourably today, in fact the EVF competes with some of the best even in 2024. The ergonomics are excellent, it doesn't put a foot wrong in terms of what it tries to do. And what it doesn't do, you probably don't need. OK, so there's no 4K/60p, or faster stacked sensor, and 120fps is limited to 1080p, but everything feels fast and responsive, including the on-sensor phase-detect AF. It is much smaller and lighter than the Panasonic S1 or S1H, yet with phase-detect AF and a very similar sensor under the hood. Z mount has also ripened well... It has a really good line up of lenses and adapters now, including the nifty Leica M mount autofocus adapter which will turn every manual focus lens into a fast and snappy autofocus optic. Plus it's the only mirrorless mount that adapts to Sony E! So you can put your native Sony mirrorless lenses on there and everything works. I can't think of a better deal for £650 at the moment on the used market for cameras. Curious to hear other opinions and what's changed in Nikon land since it came out those long 6 years ago in 2018. I can't for the life of me think of another 6 year old camera that has aged this well.

I think the (APS-C) Fuji X-S20 is one of the smallest MILCs that can shoot 4k 50p/60p, but with a 1.18x crop (on the left, fitted with the small 15-45mm power-zoom kit lens, S5 on the right):

More (3.7x-10x) here or there. Any takers already among us?

I didn't try it with any of the footage in that video, but I have tried a trial version of Topaz in the past on other 'railway' SD DV footage. Basically I found it not much better than using FFMPEG upscaling and sharpening, so I've never convinced myself to buy it.

i dont know if this makes any sense but the z6 and z6ii have a nice fat image. I find the z8 thin. Maybe from my chemical photography days. You could punch through an overexposed fat neg, but had to work harder with a thin one. I often stumble on stuff I shot on the z6 and think "gee that's nice". With the z8 I can get a great image, but i've found I get the best results shooting non log flat mode with the dynamic range boost cranked at the lowest iso possible. And then I'll still often need to denoise a bit.

I have one. The buttons. They are designed simply to irritate me. They succeed. Far too small with little feedback. I’ve actually packed mine away to sell on but I might get chance to answer your question over the eeekend. It’s such a super concept. But, at least for me, entirely unusable. I got a FX30 to “replace” it.

Fully agreed... Insta360 Ace Pro remains the king over here even before the new model people say is coming soon. source

Osmo Pocket 3.

I forgot: - great stabilization!

Mystery solved. I went to my brother’s place to retrieve some outboard gear from my old studio that he had been storing and it turns out that I gave the DX100 to him to give to my niece and he “forgot”. So here it is in its full cased glory with charger, battery and docking station. Let charging commence but I purely to check it powers on etc as I’ll need to go and get all the tapes next week.

Mixture of 8 bit and external 10 bit. The first location is definitely 8 bit.

As someone who has owned the OG S5 and uses an S5ii and an S1H, I can confirm. The S5ii has the best stabilisation (by far) and the best AF, (S5ii, then S1H, then OG S5) but actual picture quality, I'd rank them: S1H, OG S5 and last S5ii. But for anyone that doesn't need the stab or the absolute best AF, the OG S5 I think is a steal. In fact, the S5, S5ii, Z6, Z6ii and maybe some others, all share the same sensor, but perhaps with some individual brand tweaks. The S1H has an OLPF so is a slightly different beast but I prefer the still image results I get out of the Z6ii over the S5ii. There is not that much in it, but there's a subtle difference I cannot put my finger on except there is 'something'...

From my experience, ease of use in reaching that best potential image quality goes to the Bmpcc and Bmmcc, among DSLMs and sub 5000 USD class of cameras. @ita149 The og S1, S5 and the S1H provide fantastic potential in post with a modern flawless image, up there with a FX6, dethrowning a r5 in regards of dynamic range and latitude f.i. S1 would be my steal of the current moment, regarding bang for the buck for a cinema dslm. The og Bmpcc and Bmmcc are my image magic recording devices though.:)