This is the Nikon Z6 III and it is a very impressive camera. In fact, in terms of just
crude speed and performance, this is probably the most
powerful video camera available for the money from any brand. Let's get undone. (upbeat music) ♪ Gerald undone, he's crazy ♪ - What's happening everybody? I'm Gerald Undone and... As usual, some disclosure,
Nikon lent me this camera to make this review. I don't get to keep it. I wasn't paid by them to make this video, and Nikon is actually trying
something new with this launch. For the first time, they
actually lent it to me before embargo without a chaperone. So I've had it for a few
weeks and in that time, I've been able to do
whatever tests I wanted and no one was around to supervise and they haven't seen this
video before publishing and they don't get any
input on its production. However, Nikon did want me to mention that this is a pre-production camera. So keep that in mind while watching. This video does have an
actual sponsor though and that's Storyblocks. So let's jump right into what
makes this camera interesting. The sensor. It's using this new 24.5
megapixel partially-stacked sensor so only some portions of the sensor have that extra circuitry that make it stacked, located at the top and the
bottom to give the sensor an impressive speed boost
without inflating the cost as much when compared with
other fully stacked sensors. But in order to appreciate that speed, I need to first tell you what resolutions and frame rates it's capable of. So this camera can record 6K
at up to 60 frames per second, in full frame without any
crops, in raw, internally to the CF Express card, and you can do all this at a
sub 10 millisecond read speed. That is bananas. Now that's using Nikon's own N-Raw, but you can also record
H.265, ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes Raw all internally as well. But there are different resolutions and frame rates for those. In H.265, you can go up to 5.4K at 60p. In ProRes 422 HQ, it's 5.4K, but 30p max. And in ProRes Raw, it's the full 6K, but limited to 30p as well. All of these are full
frame, uncropped 16x9. The only time you're
forced into an APS-C crop is if you shoot 4K120. Even if you shoot 1080p,
240 frames per second, you're still getting 95%
of that full frame image. But let's get into the
rolling shutter results for each of those now. So like I was saying, in 6K N-Raw, I measure a read time of 9.4 milliseconds. This is fantastic. Often full frame cameras
in this price bracket take over 20 milliseconds
to read their 6K sensors and experience serious jello effects when panning too quickly. But this Z6 III is the
fastest full frame camera under $4,000, which is great. And because every one of the
other modes is derived from that 6K read out, you
can expect the same speed from the 5.4K modes, and
the 4K, which is oversampled from the 6K image. However, if you shoot
4K120, which does experience a 1.5x crop, your read time
will speed up to 6.23ms. You just won't be oversampling from 6K. So yeah, this sensor is very, very fast. However, nothing is without compromises and in the case of the Nikon
Z6 III, being that fast comes with some dynamic range drawbacks. So I've got those results
to show you as well, but before that, let's test
the mic jack on this camera so I can tell you about the sponsor of today's video, Storyblocks. Now, Nikon has improved the
preamps on this camera over its predecessor and added
a line level input option. So you can use a recorder like
my Zoom F6 as your XLR inputs and patch that audio into your camera for easier post production,
but my zoom can only do that at line level, so the
camera needs to support that hotter signal, and the Z6
III handles this beautifully. Check, check, check. So here, listen to my boom
mic routed into the camera while I tell you that Storyblocks
is a stock media platform that offers unlimited downloads of diverse and high-quality content for one predictable subscription cost. No more expensive pay per clip pricing. Just pick a plan, pay
that fee, and that's it. And you'll enjoy a library
of over a million HD and 4K video files, images,
and motion graphics templates. And speaking of those graphics,
Storyblocks has expanded their library beyond just
Premiere Pro and After Effects and now includes customizable
DaVinci Resolve templates for motion graphics
and animated sequences, an essential tool for creating
professional-looking videos at scale. And it's always easy to
find what you're looking for on Storyblocks because the
platform is very intuitive and new content is commissioned frequently to ensure you'll have fresh
assets to satisfy your project. So to get started with
unlimited stock media downloads at one set price, head
to storyblocks.com/undone or click the link in the description. Okay, dynamic range. So if you're new to dynamic range testing, what we do is we film a
chart called the Xyla 21, which has a graduated scale of increasing intensities of light. And then we take that image
and we run it through a program called Imatest, which
gives us this result here. And along the top you can
see what our test case was. In this case, this is
the 6K on the 6K timeline and 24p N-Raw at ISO 800,
which is the base ISO. And the reason why I specify the timeline is because it will let you know whether any oversampling took place. And in this case there
was no oversampling, no noise reduction, just N-Raw 6K. And then over here at slope-based DR, we're gonna see the total amount of stops that imatest detected, which
is 14 stops, which is decent. But then we go down to the 0.5 medium, which will give us a
signal-to-noise ratio of two, which is a more acceptable clean stops, like the stops you would
actually want to use. And in that case we get 9.89, so about 10. Now this is not a great result. So let's work with that image a little bit and see what a more realistic
comparison would be if we were to compare it to say the
H.265 that you could get inside of a Sony camera. So this next one is just
what happens if you put it on a 4K timeline. So you do sort of
oversampling yourself in post and we get a medium score of 10.6. This is still N-Raw and
still no noise reduction. So now what happens if we were
to apply some noise reduction because most cameras like my Sony cameras that have built in noise
reduction, you can't turn it off. So we have to compare that fairly. So if we put a moderate amount
of temporal noise reduction using DaVinci resolve, our
score jumps way up to 12.5. This might be a bit aggressive
and maybe a little bit more, but I compared it to what a
noise reduced image looks like on other mirrorless cameras. And I get sort of a similar result. But maybe you could take
a little bit off here to be conservative, but
we can get over 12 stops by applying noise reduction
in post to the raw image. If however you wanna do this internally, here I have the 5.4K H.265
image on a 4K timeline. So we're oversampling
it, but H.265 by itself also kind of gets rid
of noise a little bit just with the way that
it compresses the image. And so we jump up to
11.6 and we get a 14.2 on the slope-based DR. And if we let the camera
do that, so 4K on 4K, that means the camera oversampled it and we just took that 4K oversampled image and stuck it on a 4K timeline,
still H.265, we get 11.7. This is good to know that
the in camera oversampling or the post oversampling, is gonna get you about the same result. I still think that the
Sonys outperform the Nikon a little bit in dynamic
range even when trying to equalize everything. But again, I think they're
using a better log curve than what we're working with with N-Log. So to test that, I also did a comparison. So again, this is our regular N-Raw using, developed as N-Log, and
we get that 10 stops. If we do nothing else,
so no noise reduction, no oversampling, we just
develop it as V-Log, what you would get on a LUMIX camera, it jumps up half a stop to 10.4. So that just suggests
that there's probably more to be gained by using a better log curve. Conservatively, though, I
still think you're probably looking at a high 11, low 12 stop camera when speaking Sony language
and all things being equal, but with a little extra room to improve with noise reduction. And that's one of the best
things about having this N-Raw internal is that you can do all
of that in post, which means that the ceiling for improving
your image is much higher than it would be on a fully
processed image coming off of a SD card on a Sony camera. Also, I did notice what appears
to be a noise improvement at ISO 6,400 so perhaps
that's this sensor's second native ISO. But if we look through
the rest of the ISO range, we can see this camera performs quite well right up to ISO 25,600. It's not until ISO 51,200 that the noise becomes overwhelming. Color shifts are reasonably
controlled as well. The worst offenders are ISO 5,000 just before the ISO 6,400 cleanup. And then again, when exceeding 25,600. The white balance tool on
this camera is very accurate and gives you an adjustable
target for precise selection, but I do wish it reported back
the measured white balance after taking the reading. And overall color accuracy
on this camera is great. In fact, Nikon often ranks
at the top for color accuracy in my testing, especially
their built-in flat profile. But for maximum dynamic
range, N-Log is best. But I still have an issue with the official Nikon LUTs for N-Log. We're using the second
version of the Nikon LUT on this camera similar to the Z8, but that still means that
exposing is unnatural. The original N-Log LUT was
good because if you exposed N-Log according to the white paper, you would get correct exposure
after applying the LUT. The problem however, was the
tonality was extremely harsh. The new version of the LUT
has much smoother gradations in that gray scale, but also
significantly brightens up the image, making exposing by
the book a pointless endeavor. It might be time for Nikon
to develop an N-Log2 and a new LUT that balances
better exposure principles with the nice transitions
they've established recently and possibly capture more dynamic range. Plus the addition of uploading
user LUTS to the camera and having more flexible
view assist options would be highly welcome. But regardless, even in its current state with a little tweaking in
post, you're gonna be able to create terrific
images with this camera. I also tested the battery life
when shooting at 6K60 N-Raw, I got 101 minutes before the battery died. I didn't get any overheating
warnings in this mode, but please keep in mind
that my ambient temperatures are on the low side, so I
can't make any claims about how this camera will perform
in hotter environments, but it does seem quite reliable in a climate controlled setting. In 4K24 H.265, I got 2
hours and 21 minutes, which is a very respectable result. And again, no overheating in my studio. And then lastly, I tried
the oversampled 4K60 and even connected a
USB-C cable to the camera to test the power delivery. After about three hours, I
did have a yellow temperature caution on the screen, but it
never turned red or shut down. I kept it running for six hours total and then shut it down myself. The battery was still full. So the USB-C power
delivery works quite well. When it comes to recording those codecs, the heavier ones will only
work on the CFexpress slots, but the H.265 combos can be
recorded to the SD card. However, even if you choose a
codec that both slots support, there is no redundant recording option. I wish Nikon would consider
adding backup recording to their cameras for the
codecs that would allow it. You can use the HDMI
output for backup though, as it provides a clean,
high quality signal, and thankfully is using
a full-size Type A port. One of the things I like most
about it though, when compared to my Sonys, is that on
the Nikon you can mirror the onscreen information
and have it display on both the LCD screen on
the back of the camera, and the HDMI simultaneously. You can also use the
viewfinder in this way too, so you can be looking
through the viewfinder and showing what you see
on it over HDMI as well. Pretty cool function. The only limitations I
found is that there's no way to enable the N-Log view assist over HDMI. And when you're recording
N-Raw internally, the HDMI output seems
to be limited to 1080p, but in other modes, you
do get a proper 4K output. Oh, and speaking of that
viewfinder, it's excellent. I believe this is the world's
brightest EVF or something. It outputs 4,000 nits, which
is an absolutely insane spec, and apparently it even
supports DCI-P3 color gamut in case you know you
wanted to edit your videos using your viewfinder. But no, the screens are
great on this camera. The LCD is also the largest
and highest res display in its class, and it's
now fully articulating, which is appreciated. My only real complaint about
this body, as you can hear, is that the strap triangles are
of the noisy jangly variety. Stabilization is a mixed bag. If you're just trying
to lock off some static handheld shots, it can
do a pretty decent job. Certainly not the best I've ever seen, but probably enough for
most standard focal lengths. However, for follow shots
or anything with footsteps, it's not as compelling. You do have the option to
enable the electronic VR, which at the cost of an added
crop does improve this type of shot dramatically, but it
still doesn't look as smooth as we've seen from competing brands. But autofocus on this
camera is quite good. It inherits many aspects
from its bigger siblings, has new algorithms, nine
different detection modes, 3D Tracking, the works. In my testing for video, I
was able to track a face down to about four stops underexposed
and four stops over, which is great. Now, I was only using the 24-70,
which isn't the fastest focusing lens for video
for rapid movements, but the camera itself was quite sticky and felt very confident for talking head. Overall, I think this is a
fantastic camera for the money, which I'm told is gonna be
priced at $2,500 US dollars. If you consider what else is available in that price bracket, I think
Nikon has a really compelling option with the Z6 III. They've definitely achieved
many best-in-class titles with this body and have
convincingly set the tone for what a 6K hybrid camera is capable of. Alright... I'm done. (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues)