Today we’re making
the third and final video in my third-party BRAW trilogy
by looking at the Nikon Z6 II, and I’ll be doing a bit
of a review of this camera while I’m at it, since
I believe this device is now at it’s full potential,
complete with the RAW upgrade and 4K60 firmware.
Let’s get Undone. [offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He’s crazy ♪ ♪ Dun-dun,
Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He’s crazy ♪ -[gentle strum]
-He is. What’s happening, everybody?!
I’m Gerald Undone, and everything changed
when the fire nation attacked. So, as usual, some disclosure:
Nikon lent me this camera, this lens--the 24-70 f/4--
and also arranged for Blackmagic to send me this
5” Video Assist. The camera goes back to Nikon
when I’m done. No money changed hands, and they
do not get any input on this video’s production, or get
to preview before it’s posted. This video does have a sponsor,
though, and that’s Storyblocks. Now, the focus of this video is
gonna be more on the BRAW update and evaluating the image
quality using different formats, but since I haven’t officially
reviewed the Z6 II yet, I’m gonna take
a few minutes to do that first. Overall, I like this camera. I think it’s pretty solid
all the way around. As a photo camera,
it’s an improved version of the original Z6,
and will offer a much better transition from DSLRs
if you skipped the first version due to the Mark II’s
improved speed and reliability,
especially with autofocus. Handling and ergonomics
are pretty much the same, which is a mix of good and bad. I think
the button layout is intuitive. I like the dedicated photo/video
switch, the AF-ON button, and the easy
access to the menu. I like the dials,
the dedicated record button, and the joystick, although
I do wish it was a bit bigger. My biggest
gripe with the controls is that I wish the back D-pad was a wheel instead
to allow me to map it to ISO, instead of needing
to press a separate button. But, exposure can be controlled
using the touch screen as well, and overall,
the touch functionality on this display is great,
and I like this panel. It’s clear and bright,
but it is somewhat limited in its range of motion-
it’s just a basic tilt. I had no problems
with the viewfinder, and I’m really happy that
they added a second card slot in the form
of a UHS-II SD, which allows for backup
shooting in photo mode, but not in video mode
as far as I can tell. I’m still not a big
fan of the menu system. This is completely
subjective, of course, but I’d say
Nikon’s menus might be my least favourite
of the major manufacturers. And it still
features a lot of the same weird quirks
as the previous version, like how you can’t have zebras
on while manual focusing, so you can’t have zebras
and peaking on at the same time. And there’s still
a delay on the back LCD, and an even worse one
if you monitor over HDMI. Now, we’ll obviously get heavy
into the HDMI output later on, but something else
that’s kind of annoying is you can’t output
your on-screen information over HDMI in video mode. You can only
output a clean feed. This, of course,
makes it more challenging to capture some
of the quirks and details I want to
show you in this review unless I film
the back of the screen. And more practically,
it makes using a larger monitor with an overlay impossible
if you like to do that. It’s using the same battery,
but they have a new revision, the EL15c, which offers
slightly better performance. I was getting around 1 hour 40,
to 1 hour and 50 minutes of record time on average,
which is pretty solid. Not the best, but nothing
to complain too heavily about. But a noticeable improvement
over its predecessor when it comes to powering
is the addition of USB-C power
delivery. Now when using an appropriate
power bank or charger, you can get upwards
of 12 hours of runtime. I was only losing a few percent
of battery every 30 minutes with USB power
delivery connected. And this is made more useful
by the fact that I only ever experienced overheating
in one mode, the 4K60. But every other mode I tried,
overheating was not an issue. However, if you are planning
to record for long durations, keep in mind
that this camera still
has a 30-minute record limit, so you’ll need
an external recorder if you want uninterrupted
recordings over that half hour, which is pretty lame.
And when it comes to autofocus, like I said, it’s much
improved over the Mark I. The touch focusing is very
smooth and natural-looking, and you can make fine
adjustments to the speed and responsiveness
in the menu to dial in the focus pull you’d like. The tracking
is pretty good too. It’s not as sticky
or reliable as Sony, but for less complicated
shots it can get the job done, and the interface
is very easy to use. They’ve also added Eye AF for
video, which works quite well, and I like how you can quickly
and easily switch eyes by just pressing
left or right on the D-pad. The only real issue I have
with the autofocus on the Z6 II is that it’s not as flexible
when it comes to exposure. Dimly-lit scenes
don’t work at all, and you definitely need
to provide quite a bit of light on your subject to even
get the system to activate. This is a noticeable
deficiency when compared to what Canon and Sony
are offering. But overall,
I’d call the autofocus on the
Nikon Z6 II pretty good. I’d feel comfortable using
it in a variety of situations. Which is good, because
the manual focus is horrendous. Not only
are the lenses non-linear with no way
to change that in the menu, but when you
add in the loss of zebras, the design of the focus rings, and the inability
to repeat a focus pull, this easily becomes
my least favourite system for manual focusing
when using Z lenses. IBIS is about the same
as far as I can remember, meaning it’s nothing amazing,
but pretty good. I wouldn’t choose
this camera for vlogging, but it can
definitely help to give you some steadier handheld shots.
But after just using the Panasonic S1H
for the last couple weeks, this is a noticeable step down.
Rolling shutter performance is about
middle of the road as well. It’s better than most
of the previous gen hybrids, but there is still
some noticeable Jell-O. Again, probably not
the ideal choice for vlogging, but I think
in many other scenarios that don’t involve fast pans, you won’t
be too offended by it. And the performance
is about the same when recording
BRAW or even in 4K60, which I thought
was interesting because usually the crop mode
improves rolling shutter, and 4K60 automatically
puts you into an APS-C crop on this camera.
But the rolling shutter felt about the same
regardless of the mode. Overall,
I wasn’t really impressed with the 4K60 on this camera.
First off, you can only
record it internally at 8-bit. You can’t shoot
it in N-Log or BRAW, and it has noticeably lower
detail and worse dynamic range. I suppose it’s nice to
have for the occasional shot, but it feels like we’re really
pushing the limits of this camera by using it. You can shoot
1080p60 in BRAW, though, and you can shoot
1080p120 internally without any of those issues,
but there’s a lot of other little quirks when it comes
to video modes and crops. For example, the only way
to get proper full frame is to record internally,
but all internal recordings are limited to 8-bit and don’t
allow for log profiles. The best you’re gonna
get is their Flat profile. However,
I would like to admit that Nikon’s Flat
profile is quite nice. It’s very easy to work with,
and is one of the best straight-out-of-camera profiles
I’ve used. But if you want
more dynamic range, you have to
use an external recorder. But if you do record
10-bit N-Log externally, you force a 1.1x crop
for some reason. I actually found it closer
to 11%, but still, kinda weird. The one advantage of everything
up to this point, though, is that with the exception
of the 4K60, we’ve been getting an oversampled readout
from the 6K sensor, which is also why the 4K60
1.5x crop is less detailed. However,
if you switch to BRAW, the camera takes
on about a 7% crop, and then line
skips what remains. This does create a softer image,
and you increase the risk of moiré,
aliasing, and artifacts. But I’ll also admit,
it’s one of the better-looking line-skipped images I’ve seen.
Depending on the scene, it might be difficult
to tell the difference. Now, you can also
activate the 1.5x crop mode for BRAW if you prefer
to shoot pixel-to-pixel, which might help
avoid some of the aliasing at the the cost
of a narrower field of view, but what’s strange
is you can’t shoot 4K60 in BRAW even when in that 1.5x DX mode. So just those little
quirks like that, and the fact that it’s using
a HDMI Mini Type-C connector make it a bit
of a janky experience when it comes to
recording externally. However, once you do actually
get set up and rolling, I was quite pleased
with the image quality. This is one camera
that makes a compelling case for third-party BRAW recording. First off, you get
a dynamic range boost. I was already getting
a respectable 11.9 to 12 clean stops when shooting 10-bit.
But when I switched to BRAW I was able to push that
up to around 12.4 if I exposed in a specific way and used
the Highlight Recovery option, which is enabled
in Resolve for this camera. And if you convert your clip to
V-Log in the raw panel instead, you can get
12.7 stops normally and up to 13 stops
with Highlight Recovery. It’s not that there’s anything
particularly wrong with N-Log, and since my
original review of the Z6, Nikon has released
an official LUT that does quite well to give
you a finished-looking image with accurate colour,
and that has a similar colour intention to their
Flat profile, which is nice. But if you want
maximum dynamic range, I recommend
converting to V-Log instead, and in some shots,
that extra detail you pull out of your scene by doing so
will be quite compelling. Now, when it comes to noise,
there’s a few things to consider.
First off, if we just look through
the ISO range for 10-bit N-Log, we can see that up to
ISO 6400 is quite good, and up to
12800 is still usable, but 12800 does
start to get a bit rough, and it falls
off hard after that. I’d probably aim for an ISO
8000 max most of the time. There’s a few colour shifts here
and there, but pretty consistent throughout the range as well.
But keep in mind that those clips will have the
camera’s noise reduction applied and thus should be cleaner
than BRAW, but to be honest, I didn’t notice that
much of a difference in noise between the 10-bit and the BRAW
when exposed neutrally. It’s a different story when
you underexpose by a few stops. Here I have a comparison
of three clips, all shot about four stops underexposed
and brought up in post. The BRAW clip was the only
one that I was able to easily and mostly remove
the colour shift from. The 10-bit file
accepted some correction, but kept this muddy
purple tone in the shadows, and the 8-bit Flat file
was just a big, green disaster. But when it comes to the noise,
we can clearly see that the BRAW is noisier now,
but the details are also present beneath that
noise, where the 8-bit Flat file has been obliterated
by noise reduction. Now, if we add our own
noise reduction in post, both the 10-bit N-Log file
and the BRAW file do well to keep quite a bit of detail
compared to the 8-bit Flat, leaving us
with a tradeoff to consider. The BRAW has a purer image
when it comes to filtering and colour, but suffers
from line skipping issues. Where the 10-bit oversampled
image, while not as pure, is sharper,
with less aliasing artifacts. However, I think the BRAW
wins overall if we factor in overexposure
and pulling details back. In this shot, the sky
was completely blown out, and so were
the edges of the building. With the 10-bit file,
pulling down the exposure gives us an image like this: We
get some of the building back, but the sky is gone, and there
are serious colour issues. With the BRAW clip, however,
we save the building completely with much better colour,
and the sky is a lot less nuclear,
with more branches retained. And this was just comparing
N-Log 10-bit to N-Log BRAW. As I’ve already showed,
you can do even more with a different
gamma like V-Log, but you only have that
ability if you shoot raw. Oh, something
I wanted to update you on, too. Remember in my last video
how I complained that the S1H BRAW files seemed to have
a levels range mismatch and they were coming up contrastier
than the internal files? Well, the same thing was
happening with the Nikon BRAW, so I was talking
with Hook over at Blackmagic, and together we were
able to narrow down the issue,
and he sent me a test build of Resolve to try,
and it solves both problems. So that means in
an upcoming version of Resolve, both the S1H and Nikon
will no longer have that issue, and your images
should match a lot better. Shoutout to Hook
for solving that so quickly. So now that that’s fixed,
how’s the colour? It’s very, very close. I’d say you can comfortably mix
the BRAW footage with your 10-bit N-Log footage
without any issue, and both are giving
a nice balance between pleasing
and accurate colour. When it comes to white balance,
with the BRAW clips, you can change it in
post and it works wonderfully. There’s a control
for temperature and tint, and there’s also that exposure
slider that we discussed in the S1H video that takes
the place of the ISO adjustment since you cannot change your
ISO in post with this camera. The exposure slider
works really well to increase or decrease that in
a natural, logical way. But when it comes to setting
white balance in-camera, the Z6 II does have
a custom white balance tool, but it’s a little
less intuitive to operate. You have to map it
to a function button, but if you
just press the button, all that you’ll do
is cycle through presets. So you have to
first press the button, wheel over to one
of the custom slots, and then press
and hold that same function button again until
the target comes up. At first I didn’t think
Nikon had a custom option. I thought it was just using
the Canon system where you take a picture and then scan
that picture later on. But I stand corrected:
the custom white balance tool is there;
it’s just kind of hidden. Which is funny,
because it’s an excellent tool: it’s accurate,
it can be repositioned, and you can zoom in multiple
times to set the target exactly how you want.
Great job on this, Nikon! I just wish
it was easier to find. Then when it comes to audio,
you’ve got a 3.5mm mic jack and headphone port,
and you have good control over the gain when set
to manual, and an attenuator for receiving hotter signals,
which is appreciated. There’s also an option
to set the range between wide and vocal, and although
the vocal seemed to capture less noise and rejected
more unwanted sounds, I found it sounded stuffy
and bland, and much preferred the more open sound
of the wide response. Nikon has a reputation
for having lousy preamps that don’t do well
when turned up to compensate
for a weak mic signal, so instead I decided to try
using the RODE VideoMic NTG, which allowed me
to turn that mic up and the camera preamp way down, and then I compared that to
the sound of the Sony a7S III, which was also
set to its minimum gain, and I found that the Sony was
still a bit cleaner and fuller, but I didn’t find
the Nikon to be that bad and is definitely usable
if you give it a decent signal. But don’t take my word
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Alright, so let’s wrap up. When Jordan and I discussed
the S1H’s new firmware, we concluded that
the S1H is probably the worst camera to make
a compelling case for BRAW on, because of how well it
handles internal recording. I would say the opposite
about the Nikon Z6 II: it might be the perfect example of a camera
being elevated by BRAW. You bypass
the recording limit, you get white balance
and exposure adjustments, you can improve
your dynamic range by changing gammas
or enabling Highlight Recovery, and you bypass the aggressive
in-camera noise reduction, and you maintain integrity
and colour quality better in over-
and underexposure scenarios. The only thing
you lose is the 4K60, but like I said, that mode
feels kind of half-baked anyway. And since you pretty
much need an external recorder to fully utilize this
camera’s video capabilities, you might as well
shoot raw if you’ve gone through the trouble
of rigging up the recorder. So I guess
the real question becomes: is the Nikon Z6 II with BRAW
a combo I would recommend? I’d say that if you’re
a Nikon shooter already and you’re invested
in Nikon glass, then yes. It’s a great camera that will
feel like a natural progression. It really is solid
in pretty much every category. No real standouts, but a good
all-around hybrid system. However, if you're
starting from scratch, I’m not sure it offers
as compelling of a value in this very
competitive landscape. The camera body alone
is $2,000 US, and if you wanna shoot raw,
you need to send your camera in to Nikon--
for some bizarre reason-- and they’ll charge you
another $200 to upgrade it for raw
recording. Then you need to factor
in the recorder and media, and now you’re easily
hovering around three grand. And conversely, if you consider
the firmware updates for the Panasonic S5
that make it surprisingly close to the S1H,
but for only $1700 now, the Nikon becomes a tougher
sell, sandwiched somewhere between those Panasonics
and the a7S III. But to Nikon’s credit,
there really isn’t a camera at its price point
that offers quite the combination
of features that it does. It trades off some of the more
specific video functions like shutter angle and DCI modes that you’d find
on those Panasonics for more reliable autofocus
and faster photography, while using
a higher-resolution sensor compared to
the one on the a7S III. So for now, it might actually be
the most balanced option available on the market,
a viable jack of all trades. But I’m a little worried for
Nikon, because given its price and the fact that it isn’t
actually bringing anything revolutionary or
industry-leading to the table, I don’t think it will take much for the competition
to render it obsolete. Now as a reward
for staying ‘til the end, I’ve been playing around with
the idea of a segment called “Second Opinion,” where I throw
the video to another creator I respect to give
their thoughts on the product. I’ve done this unofficially
in some of my other reviews over the last few months,
and now we’re gonna to do it again, but more formally.
Today’s guest used to shoot with Nikon a lot back in the
DSLR days, but is completely new to their mirrorless line up,
but he recently got his hands on the Z6 II as well,
and I’ve been wanting to hear his first
impressions of the camera. It is true! I had two Nikon cameras
years and years and years ago, and I really
enjoyed those cameras. The image quality
coming out of this camera-- even though internally
it records in 8-bit 4:2:0-- is good, especially
with this 50mm f/1.8 lens. It is pretty nice.
The colours are really nice, and if you don’t mind
the 8-bit 4:2:0 footage, then I think
it’s pretty impressive, especially in the low light. This camera is--
it surprised me. When it comes to
the looks, this camera looks like it means business,
and I like that a lot. It is--
it's a nice-looking camera, and the ergonomics
are really nice, too. It sits in your hand,
and there’s this little bump here that sits right here.
It’s very comfortable. And this screen
on top is just fantastic. You see your
settings at a glance. And when it comes to autofocus,
this is where we’re slowly entering
the “indifferent” area. The autofocus,
I find... it is fine. But of course,
coming from the Sony cameras, I find it a little slow, and every once in a while
it was losing the object. The tilting screen--
not the flip out screen-- I’m indifferent about this
because as much as I like flip out screen
while I’m vlogging, when my camera is on
a slider or on a gimbal, the flip out screen
is very difficult to work with. So sometimes in my case, I prefer the flip out screen,
so I’m indifferent about this. The 29-minute recording limit--
29 minutes and 59 seconds. I think that is... why? We shouldn’t have that. Which brings us to
something else I don’t like, and that
is when you hit “record,” ...there is no sound. When you stop record...
...there’s no sound. There’s no
notification that says “beep-beep-beep,
we’re recording,” or “doo-doo-doo,
we stopped recording”! Or, like,
“ding-ding-a-ding-ding, it’s been 29 minutes
and 59 seconds, so we’re stopping recording.” This may become a problem
if you’re a one-man band and your camera is sitting
over there by itself. You have to set up
a timer to remind you that you’re coming close to the 29 minute
59 seconds recording limit. I wish this camera
was able to record more than
8-bit 4:2:0 internally. And I wish we didn’t
have to pay extra to be able to record 12-bit
Blackmagic RAW and ProRes RAW. And when it switches to 4K
50 fps, or 60 fps, you get a crop,
an APS-C crop. You cannot
record in full frame. That’s something...
it’s not a dealbreaker, but I didn’t like that.
I wish it had a feature that would stand out
compared to the competition. I wish this had something
that the others didn’t. But other than that,
I think it’s a great camera. I think it’s a camera
that you can easily miss,
but you shouldn’t. Thank you, Gerald,
for letting me be in your video. But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining,
or at least helpful, and if you did, make sure you
leave it the old thumbs-up and consider subscribing
if you haven't already. But if you did not find this
video helpful or entertaining, try setting
the playback speed to 75%. [mimicking]
Alright...I'm done. ♪ Dun-dun,
Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He’s crazy ♪
