Nikon Z5ii Launched

[BTM_Pix]

Certainly a competitor for the S5ii.

Headline features :

24MP BSI full-frame CMOS sensor

In-body image stabilization, rated up to 7.5EV

Autofocus subject detection with support for 9 subject types

11 fps Raw w/ mechanical shutter

30fps JPEG-only mode with pre-release capture

3.69M dot 60Hz EVF with 3000-nit peak brightness

4K/30 full-width, 60p w/ 1.5x crop

10-bit N-Log or N-Raw capture

Dual UHS-II card slots

Downloadable color mode presets via Imaging Cloud

Price is £1599

 

[ND64]

4k raw wouldn't need line skipping and pixel binning and so much compression that look inferior to heavily compressed h.265 if SD Express wasn't such a flop of a standard.

[ac6000cw]

2 hours ago, ND64 said:

4k raw wouldn't need line skipping and pixel binning and so much compression that look inferior to heavily compressed h.265 if SD Express wasn't such a flop of a standard.

Nikon would doubtless say you should buy one of our more expensive cameras with a CF Express Type B card slot...

This is a low-cost camera (in today's full-frame market), so I'm not surprised it's limited to UHS-II SD cards.

[MrSMW]

6 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Price is £1599

Great value in every country in the world except the US where it will cost 17,000 US dollars.

[newfoundmass]

It's an aggressive entry level camera with strong video specs, I love that Nikon is coming out guns blazing! Weird though that they aren't getting a lot of the same guff Panasonic gets for using "old" sensors and for "terrible" rolling shutter. 🤔 

[MrSMW]

48 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

It's an aggressive entry level camera with strong video specs, I love that Nikon is coming out guns blazing! Weird though that they aren't getting a lot of the same guff Panasonic gets for using "old" sensors and for "terrible" rolling shutter. 🤔 

Probably because it’s a more ‘entry level’ camera and ‘lower’ priced than the recent Lumix cameras?

[Al Dolega]

IMX410 strikes again!

[mercer]

Was excited to hear about the internal raw recording in the Z5ii and then a little less excited when I watched the Gerald Undone video... and then when he started showing real world footage, he was literally wearing a Sony Alpha jacket while recording a Nikon review... why are these competing companies sending him these cameras?

That said, the review was fine, raw implementation in an IBIS body, with decent AF, at this price has been a dream of mine, but it seems like there are so many gotchas that I am left bewildered why these companies even use raw? If your'e going to add NR, then what's the point of a smoothed over raw file? I shoot raw because I prefer the gritty textures that feel like you could reach into the frame and touch it.

I said in the Komodo price drop thread that I wouldn't be a customer, but at the current price, maybe I'd be better off saving up for a Komodo. Theoretically, that camera could provide a viable image for the next 5-10 years for me.

And with all that said, it is still exciting to see raw video to an internal SD, with these features, at this price point. When I read this post, I had already thought about posting my FP up for sale and preorder the Nikon, now I'll wait to see how it does with more serious shooters in the coming weeks/months.

The FP lives to see another day.

[BTM_Pix]

29 minutes ago, mercer said:

The FP lives to see another day.

 

[ND64]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

If your'e going to add NR, then what's the point of a smoothed over raw file?

Its old school Japanese parentalism. But I think his assumption of line skipping and then NR is not accurate. Some kind of pixel binning is happening. Its not easy to downscaling 6k to 4k as half of 6k is only 3k، so conventional line skipping doesn't work in this case. 

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

4 hours ago, ND64 said:

Its not easy to downscaling 6k to 4k as half of 6k is only 3k، so conventional line skipping doesn't work in this case. 

Half of 6K is 4K.  Each dimension is 1.5x bigger.

But your point is still right, I think.  If line skipping skips every other row and every other column to form the image, the result would be 1/4 the resolution of the full sensor - in that case, 2.5k.

[mercer]

In that case, why don't these companies just do that? A 2.5k or 3k raw image from a 6K sensor would look amazing, need less storage, have better rolling shutter? Higher frame rates, and be closer to the OG Alexa resolution. Why do they have to force crappy versions just to keep the resolution higher?

[Andrew Reid]

22 hours ago, ND64 said:

4k raw wouldn't need line skipping and pixel binning and so much compression that look inferior to heavily compressed h.265 if SD Express wasn't such a flop of a standard.

It's full 6K readout in full frame 4K innit?

SD UHS II is fine for 4K H.265.

Even at 50Mbit it looks nice.

This is a Nikon Df basically with the new flexible colour profiles.

My Z8 is made in Thailand by the way so if this is the same, price could be +36% +20% after import to US.

Which makes a used Nikon Df a much better option there.

[Ilkka Nissila]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's full 6K readout in full frame 4K innit?

SD UHS II is fine for 4K H.265.

Even at 50Mbit it looks nice.

This is a Nikon Df basically with the new flexible colour profiles.

My Z8 is made in Thailand by the way so if this is the same, price could be +36% +20% after import to US.

Which makes a used Nikon Df a much better option there.

I assume you're talking about the Zf, not the Df which is a DSLR that has no video.

 

If the tariffs are actually implemented, sellers on the used market in the US are likely to increase prices also, to reflect changes in the new prices and increased demand for used products originally sold to the US before the tariffs were implemented.

 

The 4K N-RAW from the 24 MP sensor doesn't make much sense as there is no way to do it without quality loss. Unless by first debayering and resampling the data and finally rebayering to get RGBG data, but that's a lot of processing for unclear benefits (and clearly, not really raw data). On this camera, I would just use the normal non-RAW codecs (h.265) for 4K video.

[ND64]

My point is if we had faster SDs we could have 6k raw. Because 6k30p at 6:1 compression needs 1200mbs, which is way beyond V90 cards capability.

[ND64]

1 hour ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

If the tariffs are actually implemented

Looks like its implemented. This is DJI pocket 3

[Al Dolega]

10 hours ago, mercer said:

In that case, why don't these companies just do that? A 2.5k or 3k raw image from a 6K sensor would look amazing, need less storage, have better rolling shutter? Higher frame rates, and be closer to the OG Alexa resolution. Why do they have to force crappy versions just to keep the resolution higher?

Yes! Been saying this for years, more non-standard resolutions! TVs, NLEs and even phones are perfectly capable of scaling "weird" resolutions to an HD or UHD display resolution.

For instance if the S5ii/X had a full-width 60p mode at ~2.5-3K, I think they would have been a lot more successful. Not sure if the sensor architecture is set up to do this, but it doesn't seem (from my absolute idiot's POV) like it would be too hard for four pixels from the 16:9 6K readout to be combined into one pixel, for a 3K image. Not sure how this would do with rolling shutter but it'd be an option at least.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

On 4/3/2025 at 5:34 PM, mercer said:

Was excited to hear about the internal raw recording in the Z5ii and then a little less excited when I watched the Gerald Undone video... and then when he started showing real world footage, he was literally wearing a Sony Alpha jacket while recording a Nikon review... why are these competing companies sending him these cameras?

That said, the review was fine, raw implementation in an IBIS body, with decent AF, at this price has been a dream of mine, but it seems like there are so many gotchas that I am left bewildered why these companies even use raw? If your'e going to add NR, then what's the point of a smoothed over raw file? I shoot raw because I prefer the gritty textures that feel like you could reach into the frame and touch it.

I said in the Komodo price drop thread that I wouldn't be a customer, but at the current price, maybe I'd be better off saving up for a Komodo. Theoretically, that camera could provide a viable image for the next 5-10 years for me.

And with all that said, it is still exciting to see raw video to an internal SD, with these features, at this price point. When I read this post, I had already thought about posting my FP up for sale and preorder the Nikon, now I'll wait to see how it does with more serious shooters in the coming weeks/months.

The FP lives to see another day.

Internal RAW probably was just for bragging rights, but yeah, it could backfire.

For a entry level camera, it would be perfectly acceptable to have external RAW option (which it has, with full quality) - if you are saving money in a camera, probably would not have a beast computer to handle external files.

But if Nikon make a rangefinder version of this one (or if the ZF had the same size), I would probably jump ship to Nikon. 

[ND64]

1 hour ago, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

But if Nikon make a rangefinder

What is all about this demand for rangefinder we see everywhere? I'm just curious. What difference does it make, compared to Zf for example? 

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

1 hour ago, ND64 said:

What is all about this demand for rangefinder we see everywhere? I'm just curious. What difference does it make, compared to Zf for example? 

Others, I don't know. Nostalgia, probably.

For me, it is because I like to shoot on streets, when travelling (and where anything "DSLR-like" gets a lot of attention and make everyone around unconfortable), and like to shoot in concerts (rangefinder-like cameras atracts no attention to security, SLR-like cameras are banned).

Shoot a lot of concerts and travelled a lot in my m4/3 days, nobady ever cared about the GX7, GX85 and GX9 that I had (only once one approached to see my GX7 thinking it was a film camera). Only m4/3 camera that was barred on security in a concert was...a GH2 (because looks like a DSLR).

My current X-S20 is kinda discreet, but sometime people bother a little when see a EVF hump.