mercer

Jesus man... I didn't say Sony owns autofocus. I said they have PDAF IP and I assumed Nikon licenses it from them. It seems Nikon uses/used Aptina for their on sensor AF which cross-licenses their PDAF tech with Sony. Again the point of the original question was based on an assumption other forum members made about Red cameras getting AF. I then wondered if Nikon does license their AF from Sony, would Red cameras need to switch to Sony sensors to have access to it. Again I meant no disrespect to Nikon... they're the best.

I didn't say the sensor was in other cameras. However, I did say it was a stock sensor, and that was probably a liberal use of the word on my part. Sorry. But I'll play along... Both this... https://www.popphoto.com/news/nikon-z9-sony-sensor/?amp and this... https://ymcinema.com/2022/06/28/the-nikon-z9-owns-a-very-impressive-sensor-unit/ state the sensor in the Z9 is the Sony IMX609AQJ. The second article states that the sensor in the A1 is the IMX610. Neither are listed on Sony's site as being in any other camera, but the nomenclature is pretty similar. I'm not a sensor nerd, so maybe someone else can tell me what the AQJ means on the Z9 sensor? So it seems like Nikon designed the Z9 sensor based off of a current Sony sensor design. They made some tweaks, added their own features and everybody was happy. But it seems that the word design is a pretty liberal use of the word in the sensor world. It seems like more of a drop down menu of a bunch of options and Sony takes some of their current sensor IP, and some of Nikon's and transforms it into a "new" sensor that gets manufactured and delivered to Nikon. My original question was about Sony's PDAF technology and if it was possible for Nikon to use it in a Red camera. Obviously, Nikon licenses it from Sony but do they pay an overall licensing fee to Sony for multiple cameras... or do they pay per sensor design/manufacture. I'm not knocking Nikon or Red... or even Sony. Actually, I'm kinda surprised a small army of dorks swooped down on such a banal question. This was fun.

Well, I don't need any because I'm not a customer at any point in the near future, but if I was considering buying into the Red ecosystem, I'd like a bit more information from Nikon or "Red" before I made such a big purchase... another press release... a new Red camera with a Nikon badge on it... something to let me know that they're not just going to ingest the IP and scale back their new cinema division.

Here's an interesting video regarding the purchase... For those that don't have the time, or inclination, to watch, he basically says that this purchase was so Nikon could get into the high end cinema market. He also claims it has nothing to do with the patent, but then kinda contradicts himself. Either way, it's a breakdown of what probably occurred over the past 2 years between Red and Nikon... Trigger Warning: if you despise Red and believe their patent is complete BS, then you may want to skip this video.

I wonder if Red (Nikon) is planning on reassuring their customer base after this news. I know I would need it, or a new release under the new management, before I invested anything into Red right now.

Haha, actually the Z9 is supposedly a stock Sony sensor with a couple tweaks. I assume it's like the whole D850 debacle Nikon found themselves in. And I don't know what difference it makes who designed the sensor? If Sony owns a patent for their AF, and Nikon wants to use it, Nikon would still have to pay a license fee for it... if they designed the sensor or not.

Never really shot with a Fuji but I watched a lot of videos and I think the XH2s looks great... in ProRes anyway (that's all I'm interested in with that camera) but I think the camera is way overpriced. I'd get an R5 or R5C for just a little more.

Deleted for joke in poor taste.

Most non-alien entities on planet Earth would probably call it an opinion. Regardless, since your reply was filled with your own irrelevant value judgement, I found it humorous that you deemed mine as such.

Haha "value judgement"

There has been no mention of n-raw being ticoRAW since 2022, so I couldn't say with any certainty if the current version of n-raw is the same as was announced before the Z9 or Z8 was released. As far as Red's patents... I'm not a patent attorney or a patent judge but I do know that many companies, including Apple, could not convince a court that their patent was invalid. We do know that in May of 2022, Red filed a lawsuit against Nikon for patent infringement and less than a year later, in April of 2023, the case was dismissed at the request of both Red and Nikon and less than a year after that, it's announced that Nikon purchased Red. So it may be possible that Nikon wants to enter the high end cinema market, but based on the timeline of events, one can ascertain that Nikon's purchase of Red is about Redcode Raw... maybe... but I haven't sat in on any of the meetings between Nikon and Red for a while...

Exactly. I don't even know what to think. I wasn't planning any upgrade anytime soon, so I can wait to see how things pan out, but how Canon responds will definitely sway me one way or the other. Hell, this was so out of left field, that for all I know, Canon could announce they bought Arriflex next week.

Doesn't Nikon license their AF from Sony when they purchase their sensors? If that's the case, will future Red cameras have Sony sensors if they have AF?

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I could not care less about Red's patent. It held up in court and I am a firm believer in intellectual property so whatever. And I don't believe raw video is for most videographers, so I don't see the point of it being in most cameras. But again, whatever.

I'm saying that they bought Red so they could own RedCode and everything that goes with it. I think NRaw was just a stop gap and will disappear or become their uncompressed Raw format. I wouldn't be surprised if the current version of NRaw is just RedCode under a different container.

I feel very confident being a reader of this former for the past decade to fully understand every aspect of this acquisition.

This has probably been in the works for at least a year, if not longer, so it should be possible to introduce RedCode with their next big release.

What would be the point then? Red isn't a huge company with large profits but they do have RedCode with a great plug in workflow. I'd think it's the only reason for Nikon to purchase Red.

To add... this has been in the works for a while so I wouldn't be surprised if a cine camera pops up from Nikon/Red at this year's NAB, or if that new Nikon camera that's been rumored has RedCode built in.

This is crazy news. It'll be interesting to see what this means for both companies going forward... if anything. If Nikon were smart, their next generation of cameras should be utilizing RedCode... or is it ZedCode now? I assume it will have no immediate effect on Canon's RawLite if they had/have a licensing agreement with Red. I read somewhere that Red reversed engineered the RF mount, so it's possible that Canon and Red didn't have a real license agreement other than an agreement to leave each other alone for their individual patent infringements. Since narrative filmmaking is my only interest, I'm kinda happy I decided to build a small set of Nikkor lenses... even if they're F mount ai-s lenses. Personally, I would love to see Red make a video centric DSLR using the F mount... even though that's never going to happen. Also Nikon made a couple fantastic Super 8 cameras back in the day, so it could be interesting to see them go retro with a Red powered, digital Super 8/S16 camera. I'm not really interested in Z mount lenses, and have been looking towards Canon for any future camera upgrade but now I may have to start looking toward Nikon. Since I am only interested in Raw or ProRes acquisition, it'll be very interesting to see how this affects Canon going forward.

@kye we've discussed this a bit in the past regarding selling everything and moving to a new system and normally I would be against it... I still consider my 5D3 with ML Raw as my main camera... but if my main camera was a m4/3, I might consider it. Unfortunately, m4/3 as a small camera system is a thing of the past. Any new cameras will be as big as Panasonic's FF offerings, so if you want any of the upgrades you mentioned, the only option is to change systems or deal with the bigger m4/3 bodies. Sony could be a great option, as @BTM_Pix mentioned because you can use some of your current manual focus m4/3 lenses with a simple adapter while you decide what lenses you'd like to invest in. Also, eventually there will be no m4/3... it may not be for a few years, but the writing is on the wall... so your Voigtlander lenses will become VERY expensive paper weights. Sell them while you still can. Then again, if you are happy with the images you are getting with what you already own, then there's no reason to upgrade. But if you want some of the features you mentioned, the only options are a change in systems... hell you can have a lot, if not all including size, by going full frame. In the end, after selling off/trading what you have, you could probably end up with more money.

I have a lot more to say about this... but only have a few minutes to reply. I think I wrote a similar post years ago and one of my arguments for a camcorder is that when you are shooting a zero budget, guerrilla style film, you need to look as inconspicuous as possible and nothing says dorky dad more than a camcorder... nobody would pay you any mind whatsoever. Now I could be content with ProRes HQ but being a raw video only shooter, I would much rather have raw. I love the form factor of camcorders... but I also still prefer DSLRs to mirrorless so I'm basically a dinosaur in today's market.

It has 10bit so it's a cinema camera... I'm sure a future YT video will decide it's as good, if not better than an Alexa.

I spent a lot of time testing different configurations to make the FP more ergonomic. I finally found the best cage and drive to keep it, relatively, compact without going down the Dark Labs rabbit hole... With that said, out of the box, the camera isn't much bigger than the original eos-m, so when you add a cage, the ssd, lens adapter and lens, it morphs into a much larger camera that isn't much smaller than my 5D3 but much more cumbersome. The screen is pretty nice on the FP and excuse the pun, but with the 5D3, you can see the "magic" of raw on the LCD. With the FP, although it's a better screen, the image has a very flat, dimensional look. Battery life isn't that great with the FP either, compared to the 5D3... I'd say you can get about 45 minutes, or so. In some ways, the FP would probably work better if fully rigged out or if the barebones camera was on a gimbal with the SSD attached to the gimbal's handle. With my current setup, I'd say @BTM_Pix 's approach using M mount lenses would probably be the most compact route. I've been looking at some LTM lenses, so we'll see. In a perfect world, I'd have the money to buy an R5C or R5ii when it gets released, but that doesn't seem likely, so I'll decide what to do with my FP. To tell the truth, if someone offered me a good price, I'd consider selling it right now. I got OpenAI for video now.

As I'm sure you know and you just misspoke, you need an external drive for 12bit 4K, not an external recorder. You can shoot internal 12bit 1080p, but ML Raw has an undeniably better IQ, in all respects, than the FP's FHD. I agree about the IBIS, but I don't really see a point for ML Raw with the R5? You can already shoot internal raw. But all of the Canon IBIS cameras are Digic X, so it will be a long time before they break that code. It will be interesting to see what they can do with the EOS-R and hopefully the M50. I'd actually be really happy if they were able to enable continuous MLV raw on the 5D4. But I'm still really impressed with what the 5D3 with ML Raw and a Canon IS lens is capable of handheld. So maybe I'm just easily impressed.