New Nikon Camera coming…Z8?

[hojomo]

1 minute ago, hojomo said:

I think the recent momentum of S35 bodies makes a viable market for sigma to release a DN version of these basic ranges. I would really like to see a new 18-35 1.8 and many fx30 (and forthcoming fx60) shooters would scoop them up in short order

maybe a lot more folks would jump if they make it a 16-35 1.8 😉

[markr041]

Was this color graded? Yes, heavily (and no LUTs) like all of my videos, to create the "illusion of reality."

Think National Geographic video of meerkats - no film-like color tints or distortions; rather see the habitat and watch the activities of its inhabitants as if you were there. But with humans, unlike with animals and birds, one cannot hide or wear a disguise or shoot with an enormous lens.

Some good stills too:

[IronFilm]

7 hours ago, hojomo said:

maybe a lot more folks would jump if they make it a 16-35 1.8 😉

I'd rather it is 18-50mm even if that meant they made it a little slower f2 lens

We already have a 28-70mm f2 lens for FF, why can't S35 get some love too? 

The fact that lens exists make me certain an 18-50mm f2 S35 lens could exist if people are willing to pay a similar cost & weight penalty (because S35 is a smaller sensor, it could likely be even more ambitious, such as 16-60mm f2) 

18-35mm is just such a short range, I'd prefer the zoom ranges I suggested above, especially if we can have them overlap a little too:

12-20mm f2

16-60mm f2

50-150mm f2

[MrSMW]

5 hours ago, IronFilm said:

I'd rather it is 18-50mm even if that meant they made it a little slower f2 lens

Agree.

There have been a lot of boring and conventional focal length lenses in recent years, the; 24/35/50/85, 24-70, 70-200 in full frame.

Yawn 🥱

Back in the 70’s and 80’s we had far more interesting stuff like; 30-70, 40-80, 28-85 (albeit that one being variable aperture yuck) and recently from Tamron; 20-40, 35-150, 70-180 plus those interesting APSC Sigma 18-35, 50-100 f1.8’s.

I’d happily sacrifice a bit of aperture speed for size & weight, even focal range, especially with something like Tamron’s 35-150 f2/2.8, so something like 40-120 constant f2.8 because who cares about f2 for a couple of mm?!

For me it’s been the one weakness of L Mount, boring as f**k focal lengths and/or lenses that are too big and heavy.

I look at Sony e Mount and Nikon Z with envy.

I need an R2D2 projected Princess Leia moment with a message to Sigma about being my only hope…

[IronFilm]

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

Agree.

There have been a lot of boring and conventional focal length lenses in recent years, the; 24/35/50/85, 24-70, 70-200 in full frame.

Yawn 🥱

It is because "24/35/50/85, 24-70, 70-200 in full frame" (and a few others) are the most standardly useful focus lengths. 

For someone starting out in photography/videographer then 24-120mm f4 (if Nikon, or 24-105mm otherwise) plus 35mm & 85mm f1.8 primes are the bare minimum kit to get started with. 

Then add on 16-35mm f4 , 24-70mm f2.8, 50mm f1.8, 70-200mm f2.8 and you've got yourself a very complete-ish lens set for a working professional. 

 

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

Back in the 70’s and 80’s we had far more interesting stuff like; 30-70, 40-80, 28-85 (albeit that one being variable aperture yuck) and recently from Tamron; 20-40, 35-150, 70-180 plus those interesting APSC Sigma 18-35, 50-100 f1.8’s.

The reason they had 30-70 , 40-80 , 28-85 is because they didn't yet have the technology to design a standard 24-70mm f2.8 zoom

But many more years have passed since then, and computer aided designs are normal, and we've got mirrorless mounts not DSLR mounts (which allow more to be done with optical designs). 

I feel it is time for them to make the next move (to take advantage of better tech and the more shallow mirrorless mount, offer even greater range with the same f-stop such as imagine a 20mm to 100mm f2.8 lens!! 😮 Or offer similar range but even faster, such as a 24-70mm f2 lens

Seems like only Canon has done this so far, with the 28-70mm f2 lens for RF mount. 

[kye]

15 hours ago, IronFilm said:

It is because "24/35/50/85, 24-70, 70-200 in full frame" (and a few others) are the most standardly useful focus lengths. 

I thought that the standard focal lengths were normally designed to be spaced out relatively evenly in increments where you could move the camera closer/further to fine-tune.

Obviously there are variations within that progression, and also variations in lens line-ups (like 28mm, 56/58mm, 90/100mm lenses etc) but that when you see matched sets of cine lenses, those were the main ones.

There were quite a lot of other bundles with other spacings, which was interesting, although I did sort from highest price so started with the lens sets with every lens they made!!

[D Verco]

I wish Nikon did an S-line 42mm. I'd replace my 35 and 50mm. 24mm - 42mm - 85mm. 

42mm always should've been the 'standard' focal length

[MrSMW]

My OCD prefers round numbers based on 10 so 20/40/80/160mm would be my preference so zoom lenses; 20-40, 40-80 and 80-160.

Then f stops as: 1,2,4,8,16 so being realistic, f2 for my 20-40, f2 for my 40-80 and f4 for my 80-160.

Plus all filter sizes the same while I’m at it.

Under 500g, around 750g and no more than 1000 for the big boy.

This is my open letter to Sigma 😉

[gethin]

I bit the bullet and bought a z8.  I've done a bit of testing and couple of shoots.  First impressions are not great.
I need to do some more scientific testing this weekend, but the highlight rolloff and lack of dynamic range make the 10 bit h.265 look worse than my 8bit z6ii.  I was keen to get the raw video for those times where I wanted the best possible quality, but kinda hoping and expecting (from the general comments/videos/raving I've seen) that the h.265 would be a step up from the z6.  The stills dynamic range isn't quite up to my 11 year old d800 either.  And today I found the autofocus hunting a bit in low light.  Seeing as my bread and butter shooting involves low light and very high contrast I'm not sure it's the right fit for me so far. I've tried ramping up the d-lighting but meh.  

Anyone know if the highlight rolloff improves with pro res?  I really don't want to shoot raw for my little shoots - $7K AUD to make my life harder 🤦 

I really love high dynamic range stills cameras, I don't think there's one hybrid camera in sony's line up that is a good fit either. It's kinda depressing knowing that I could increase the quality of my output by shooting stills consistently with that 11 year old beastie. 

[FHDcrew]

49 minutes ago, gethin said:

the highlight rolloff and lack of dynamic range make the 10 bit h.265 look worse than my 8bit z6ii

Interesting.  I'm curious, how are you converting to rec709?  Are you using Nikon's 3d LUT?  I shoot in NLOG frequently on my Nikon Z6, and i find that Nikon's 3D LUT has pretty bad highlight rolloff.  I get significantly better results if I use Davinci Resolve's Color Space Transform to go from Rec2020/NLOG to Rec709/Rec709.  Seriously, looks wayyy better than the LUT.  You should be able to get great results from NLOG; give Davinci's CST a try.

[Simon Young]

1 hour ago, gethin said:

Anyone know if the highlight rolloff improves with pro res?  I really don't want to shoot raw for my little shoots - $7K AUD to make my life harder 🤦 

Prores HQ looks way better, especially in nlog on the Z8 and the Z9. When you shoot in h265 there's a disgusting amount of internal noise reduction going on no matter what profile you're in and it's not possible to switch it off.

[Evgeniy85]

6 hours ago, gethin said:

I bit the bullet and bought a z8.  I've done a bit of testing and couple of shoots.  First impressions are not great.
I need to do some more scientific testing this weekend, but the highlight rolloff and lack of dynamic range make the 10 bit h.265 look worse than my 8bit z6ii.  

H265 looks worse than ProRes HQ or N-RAW but only in terms of texture, the dynamic range should be the same.
I haven't done any side by side tests but it looks like the DR in N-log is the same as on Z9 or Z6II.

Are you shooting in N-log? What are you using to transform the footage to REC709?

The official LUTs are pretty harsh, even the updated ones for Z8. That might be your problem. 

[IronFilm]

On 7/10/2023 at 12:22 PM, kye said:

I thought that the standard focal lengths were normally designed to be spaced out relatively evenly in increments where you could move the camera closer/further to fine-tune.

Obviously there are variations within that progression, and also variations in lens line-ups (like 28mm, 56/58mm, 90/100mm lenses etc) but that when you see matched sets of cine lenses, those were the main ones.

As "full frame" is what is being discussed, I'm naturally referring to what's commonly normal standard focal lengths for photographer. 

Of course for sets of cinema lenses then what is normal is completely different. 

  

On 7/10/2023 at 6:01 PM, MrSMW said:

Under 500g, around 750g and no more than 1000 for the big boy.

750gm?? Are you crazy???
My OCD will accept 700gm or 800gm as being acceptable, but 750gm is a totally unacceptable weight for a camera. 

[markr041]

The Z8 as an APS-C video camera.

You can shoot RAW in DX mode, which crops the sensor and gives you 5405x3040 clips, better than 5K and much better than 4K. You can shoot RAW at the highest quality (HIGH), with the bitrates 1/4th those for 8K - so you can shoot 48 minutes at HIGH RAW on a 1TB card, as opposed to 12 minutes for 8K!

You can of course us DX (APS-C) lenses in those mode. For this video I used the FF Nikon Z 24-70 f4 lens. An advantage of the crop is that mostly one is using the center of the lens, so corner drop-off is irrelevant - most lenses from Nikon are really good in the center.

So, how does it look:

Think meerkats - habitat and inhabitants in their activities.

5K (5120x2880) frame grabs:

 

[PannySVHS]

Colours look thin and not overly active to me in the videos above, like ooc colours on my compact camera. But with grading that can be changed of course. Have seen some beautiful colours coming from the N9 on youtube.

[Fairkid]

On 7/11/2023 at 7:03 PM, Evgeniy85 said:

H265 looks worse than ProRes HQ or N-RAW but only in terms of texture, the dynamic range should be the same.
I haven't done any side by side tests but it looks like the DR in N-log is the same as on Z9 or Z6II.

Are you shooting in N-log? What are you using to transform the footage to REC709?

The official LUTs are pretty harsh, even the updated ones for Z8. That might be your problem. 

The most recent official LUT is plain awful. Someone on a Z9 facebook group posted one which is much better, smoother and with more dynamic range. In general terms the camera has average dynamic range, it's OK and gets the job done, shadow recovery is pretty good. The camera ergos, screen and evf are really nice though, I like shooting with it and the Nikon Z 24-70 f2.8 is a really nice lens. 

[Fairkid]

1 minute ago, Fairkid said:

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/nikonz9/permalink/641169057847137/

[Evgeniy85]

All manufacturers LUTs are pretty bad but Nikon is on a different level of bad.

I'm using Cinema Tools for both Nikon and Sony and quite happy with them. 

[markr041]

Color Space Transforms in DaVinci are better than any LUTs I have tried as a base for grading, although one poster calls the resulting REC709 DaVinci Resolve Studio transformed colors from 12bit RAW N-Log "thin and not overly active." I am not sure what that means, but my color criterion recording meerkats and their environment is the look of accuracy not "fat" or active. Skin reproduction is the main focus. And, bright sunlight produces different colors than overcast conditions. They both cannot be "beautiful" or equally inactive(?). Departing from color accuracy as a criterion makes color judgements totally subjective. But that is art.

In any case with 12bit RAW color you have great material to create whatever color effect and artistic statement you want.

 

[PannySVHS]

One poster- you must be talking about me. @markr041 I meant "thin and not overly attractive". Typo in the last word. 😂 With thin colour I mean a look like a crayon sketch on paper, as opposed to thick as oil paint on a canvas, rich, subtle, involving, like in a Rembrandt painting. But that is just due to the neutral palette left as is after the CST, or Lut, if that is preferred.

I have seen some awesome colour coming from the 12 bit NRaw on youtube. It´s just a matter of colour grading and what one is aiming for with powerhouse cameras such as a modern Panasonycanikon. Would love to test an Z8 or Z9s NRaw. 12+ stops of dynamic range are plenty to work with for me. Would love to hear from deezid about his findings with the Lumix S5 II and Braw. @deezid