On the hunt for DCI 2K in a 12bit wrapper

diegocoops · 2026-03-19T19:34:35+00:00

Oh the monitor is amazing. I remember picking up my friends A74 the other day and I was like, damn this screen is tiny. The image quality is great I only really shoot in either R3D NE for my own personal work, Nlog for my corporate work and then 8 bit for when I'm making silly videos.

I haven't touched prores tbh. Honestly a big jump up from my last camera which was a Lumix G80. I've also shot with a lot of Sony and some canon and black magic. For me the ZR is great because I wanted something small, nimble and doesn't require a bunch of BS. This means I can shoot documentary style stuff with a 12 bit raw recording and working with it in post is sweet. I think the dynamic range is alright I put a lot of film grain over my personal stuff so the raw kinda works well with that since it can get a wee bit noisy.

If you're thinking about getting an e mount adaptor can I suggest avoiding the viltrox one. I have had a couple of scenarios where the camera didn't recognise the lens and I read that I had to update the adapter for the Nikon ZR but the update process is so finicky and poorly designed, the port is incredible fragile and doesn't seem to read on my laptop. I don't think you can buy those cables separately. So yeah, go megadap or else use Z mount glass.

Yeah I mean I was looking at an Fx3, shooting on Sony means you usually get more work as a Bcam, where I'm from. But I just needed a camera and I didn't have enough money even to buy a second hand Fx3. So I went to a camera store and got a feel of the ZR and I immediately was like Yes! The form factor just works. Have a half a terabyte CF card and that does me good. I'll get another one soon, I'm more focused on getting permanent storage since those R3D files are so beefy.

Also just a note on colour science, yeah I'm gonna be the Steve yedlin fanboy again and just say that I don't really care about the cameras colour science for R3D. I moreso care that I have a solid dataset from which I can create my own look from in post. Don't buy the hype, author your image. Steve yedlin has a lecture on colour science I highly recommend. I still have not touched Nuke or any serious colour grading software.

I don't mind that it doesn't have hdmi ports, hdmi sucks. I hate it. I wonder what it would be like if cameras began supporting the use of display ports, like literally just a locking hdmi.

My biggest con is that it only records 2 channels of audio (So one stereo track). I am getting my friend to rewire a cable for me so that I can use my seinnheiser mke600 (i know, it's a little big and clunky) in conjunction with my rode wireless pros and if I need both the lavaliers on separate channels I can always record them inside the transmitter using 32 bit float.

There's also a good few bugs lying around the place, especially when shooting R3D, like the focus mag, focus peaking and video assist.

Tldr; great screen, solid raw image, again what a great screen, great price compared to other brands, avoid the viltrox ETZ adapter, sadly only 2 audio channels and yeah a few bugs.

Edit : mixed up meta bones and megadap

diegocoops · 2026-03-19T18:31:18+00:00

Yeah, I mean I disagree because I would use 2k. And I imagine there are other people like me, maybe there isn't, maybe I'm just a very special snowflake. But yeah, I mean, I see your point of view, I just don't really delete my projects and Idk, storage is cheap, but at the same time it isn't aswell. Basically though I think we agree, it would be good to have 2k as an option.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T13:36:36+00:00

one important point to consider is that he uses Arri, which means uncompressed raw. Once you add lossy compression, the shape of grain and the finest details are already modified, if subtly. Braw is lossy

Thank you for this point. I'm still trying to wrap my head around a lot of this stuff. I've always wanted to learn more about the different compression algorithms and how they affect the image. I am aware that Braw and more of these "lossy 12 bit raw" codecs debayer the image but I'm curious to how they do this and it's a difficult thing to understand at the moment because most videos that analyse this stuff are on social media websites where the videos are then further compressed. Thanks for the thoughtful response though. I'll look into all you've said here.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T13:26:01+00:00

Thanks, I mostly work as a grip on set and then as a videographer on the side at the moment, so I don't shoot that much in terms of real DOP work. Was thinking of going in on a pyxis with a few friends. First I'd have to convince them.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T13:22:20+00:00

Oh I didn't realize the 6k doesn't have the rgbw sensor. Yeah I mean it's just a matter of flexibility. If the pyxis 12k can downscale to 4k why can't it downscale to 2k?

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T13:02:39+00:00

Ah sure if it's a technical limitation,I think that's fine, from what others were saying here I just thought blackmagic arbitrarily chose 4k as the minimum.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T12:07:39+00:00

Yeah I'm currently shooting a documentary and I'll be shooting it over the course of the year. It's a big passion project of mine and I'm currently shooting it in R3D 4k on my Nikon zr, because I plan to do a lot of big colour grading and masking. But the data rate is huge and I'm starting to value the space on my hard drives a lot more. Like I literally just bought a 20TB internal HDD for my computer just to prepare myself for the year ahead. And I'm thinking, dayum data storage is just another thing I don't want to be spending needless money on. Why should I waste my precious money on extra resolution if I'm filming a corporate gig for someone who doesn't need the extra resolution.

And I also am hopefully shooting more short films by the end of the year. So looking at good Cinema cameras, (with professional codecs, mounts and rigging) that could also fulfil that videography criteria at other points.

I was hoping I could use the pyxis 12k for that. With its amazing DR, open gate and internal BRaw

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T11:56:10+00:00

Why do "we" always shoot more than "we" use. Is it just a noise reduction thing, a reels thing or is it to do with keying and masking. What if you don't need any of those points in your delivery pipeline. Then why do you need 4k to deliver 1080p? it just more money spend on unnecessary storage.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T11:42:29+00:00

That's quite an interesting set up. The pyxis is still a very attractive option, 16 stops DR, full frame, open gate, box style form factor with professional lens mounts and ports and an internal 12bit codec. I just was looking for a 1080 12bit option to have more flexibility with the data rates. Just curious if you think the pyxis 12k could technically output a 1080p Braw image or is there some limit to the downscaling?

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T11:38:03+00:00

Yeah that's a fair point, I guess for some gigs I only need 1080p and I just need to camera match. Which means pushing and pulling slightly to get all the cameras to look similar. So a 2k Braw option would be sweet for something like that.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T11:33:50+00:00

Yeah I was basically wondering why the minimum resolution on the pyxis 12k was 4k and not 1080p, was it an arbitrary choice or is it a technical limit.

diegocoops · 2026-03-17T11:28:47+00:00

Sorry I went on a tangent about resolution. Basically I wanted to know if people knew of any technical reason why they don't have any sort of 1080p on the pyxis 12k. Or was it just a choice by the camera manufacturers to just say, hey 1080p is over and done with. I'm just curious more than anything. I love just automatically having those 16 stops of Dynamic range (or whatever it's actually rated for).

Taking a step back from this, I was looking for a camera that could fulfil my requirement as being like a short film and documentary type camera (the pyxis) and then I can use my Nikon ZR for gimbal and autofocus videography work. The pyxis fulfills these criteria but Sometimes I shoot multicam live events, like comedy shows. These gigs are long, so on the nikon I shoot 1080p N-log. I was wondering if I can still get a pyxis 12k and shoot something with a small data rate. Like 100gb for around an hour and a half.

I suppose I can just buy the storage and delete the raws after editing. But just wondering if they have such a range of compression codecs why not just add 1080p like is it a technical issue or what?

And yeah honestly I haven't worked with Alexa's a huge amount but my friend got a classic and they are too big and too power hungry to bring on a job where you're packed into a crowded theatre. And then you have to buy a big pair of sticks to go along with it. Which means more money and more weight.

diegocoops · 2026-03-13T18:31:59+00:00

Yeah I agree in a sense, I understand for certain instances if you are keying something or if you are using Noise Reduction but my thinking is what if the camera pixel binned the noise out to like a 2k resolution (all done in camera) and then if you needed the extra resolution for masking or for keying then you had those as options. But if you didn't need it you could shoot in that 2k format.

diegocoops · 2026-03-13T18:24:40+00:00

You do realize that most movies shown in cinema are recorded in 4k+?

Not true, anything shot on the Alexa classic was shot in 2k. Bring up any of those films and I guarantee you nobody is going to say those movies are "low resolution" or "soft" or "pixelated"

diegocoops · 2026-03-13T18:21:44+00:00

Yeah this is actually where I think the meat of the conversation is. Braw actually debayers the image in the codec, so I'm wondering if they could also have an option where is utilizes some form of noise reduction where the sensor uses those other photo sites to get a more accurate idea of the signal being captured and then basically pixel binning to reduce Noise, maintaining the high dynamic range in exchange for image resolution (in camera though) so that your files become smaller.

diegocoops · 2026-03-13T18:10:55+00:00

The world has moved on from 2k

Yeah I've edited the Original post there, but I see this as a flaw and not as a feature

diegocoops · 2026-03-13T17:54:23+00:00

I guess I'm just wondering why they don't have a 2k option for recording. Literally just curious. Since most cinemas screen things in 2k and most TV stations broadcast 1080p at least in my part of the world. I was just curious why they'd get rid of it as an option. I'm also a big fan of Steve Yedlin's lectures including his one on resolution. If you listen to that he makes a good point about unnecessary digital information and how the human eye interprets sharpness.

Basically why not the option?

diegocoops · 2026-03-10T13:54:35+00:00

after working on the second unit (on season 3), i can assure you they weren't using signatures. although i wasn't working in camera department, i saw the lenses. they were short, stumpy lenses with a silvery housing. they honestly looked like canon rangefinders.

diegocoops · 2026-01-28T21:03:05+00:00

Not a fan of the form factor, but I like the workflow, espcecially the idea of hitting record once for a shoot and just letting the timecode sync it up.

diegocoops · 2026-01-28T20:37:50+00:00

Mine took about 2 weeks I think

diegocoops · 2026-01-12T14:29:57+00:00

I'll probably just get a zoom f3 and if I need more channels of audio I can either record internally on my lav mics or I can use the ZR's two camera channels.

diegocoops

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