When the Nikon ZR was released, there was discussion about whether R3D NE, the new Raw video format it introduced, was just Nikon’s N-Raw with a splash of red paint on it.

While it quickly became apparent that they were essentially the same under the hood, our testing shows that despite their similarities, there are actually quite a few important differences between the formats that become evident when you’re shooting with and editing them.

Gain

The most significant difference between N-Raw and R3D NE is how they deal with ISO and gain. N-Raw works the way most people will be familiar with: you set your ISO, and the camera generally applies a corresponding level of gain to the signal coming off the sensor. If you set your ISO too high at the point of capture and your highlights clip, there’s nothing you can really do, unless there’s still some data left in one of your color channels.

With R3D NE, you choose between the low and high gain step settings. Changing the “ISO sensitivity” just writes a metadata tag to the footage that changes its brightness.

R3D NE, however, uses an Exposure Index approach, exploiting the camera’s dual gain steps. You choose whether to use the low step, at ‘ISO 800,’ or the high step at ‘ISO 6400’. You can then choose a different “ISO,” changing the lightness of your preview in the video file and writing a tag to the metadata. This change only affects how the footage is rendered; the camera isn’t changing the amount of gain being applied while it’s recording. This lets you change the “ISO” (really, just the lightness) of the footage in post.

Compatibility

DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere both support N-Raw and R3D NE (with the caveats about lens corrections noted below), but if you edit with Final Cut, you’ll have to choose a bit more carefully. Apple’s software can work with R3D NE if you install Red’s free plugin (which gives you full control over all the Raw parameters), but it currently can’t open N-Raw footage.

Lens corrections

There’s also the matter of geometric lens distortion correction, which are part of the design of many Z-mount lenses. As with the Z6III, the ZR embeds correction profiles into N-Raw, but, at the time of writing, DaVinci Resolve is the only editing software that actually recognizes and applies the profile. You can open N-Raw footage in Premiere, but it won’t implement the lens corrections.

Currently, you have to use the (not particularly user-friendly) RedCine-X Pro software to apply software lens corrections.

Getting lens corrections on R3D NE is currently even more limited. The profiles are embedded in the files, but even Resolve won’t render the footage using them. We’d expect it to support them in the future, but BlackMagic says it can’t provide any details on future releases.

To apply corrections to R3D NE footage, you currently have to use the very latest version of Red’s relatively clunky RedCine-X Pro transcoding software to render it as ProRes with the profiles applied. During this step, you can also adjust your clip’s lightness or white balance and apply LUTs, but you’ll probably want to use a different program for heavy color work, sharpening and denoising.

Log curves

As is standard practice, N-Raw and R3D NE are typically converted into Log gamma when opened in editing software, so that you can use existing Log-to-[working space] LUTs and because rendering the data in a linear manner would be incomprehensible/not especially helpful.

The R3D NE workflow appears rather more sophisticated

Like the handling of ISO and gain, the R3D NE workflow appears rather more sophisticated. N-Raw files are typically rendered to N-Log and the gamut of the Rec.2020 colorspace. This is a relatively simple Log curve that we’ve not always got on especially well with.

The R3D NE files render to Red’s Log3G10 and RedWideGamut. Like Panasonic’s V-Log system, Log3G10 is a curve designed for more dynamic range than any camera currently offers, with each camera using the subset of that curve that’s appropriate for its output. This means that the R3D NE files can be used with any LUT designed for existing Red cameras, rather than needing dedicated LUTs to be produced for it.

Interestingly, Adobe says it uses Red’s software development kit to handle both R3D NE and N-Raw files, so if you edit using Premiere, the starting point for N-Raw files is also Log3G10 (though you can transform this across into N-Log, if you want to use LUTs designed for N-Log).

LUTs

There are more professionally-designed LUTS for R3D NE’s Log3G10 curve than Nikon’s N-Log, since it’s been in use in cinema cameras since 2017.

While Nikon provides default LUTs for N-Log and Log3G10 that you can grade on top of, the ecosystem around the two Log curves is quite different. There are a lot of LUTs designed for Red footage available, many of which were designed by professional colorists, since Log3G10 has been used in cinema cameras for years. N-Log has a comparatively limited selection, which is worth considering for those who want the option of using or tweaking existing looks, rather than having to come up with their own from scratch.

Other workflow considerations

Focus peaking can be quite faint when shooting R3D NE, but it disappears completely if you turn on View Assist. Making things more difficult, you can’t punch in to check critical focus while recording Raw, like you can when shooting compressed footage.

There are a few other things to consider when choosing between formats. For instance, when shooting R3D NE, you can’t use focus peaking when using the View Assist feature to preview what the footage will look like with a LUT applied, which you can with N-Raw.

There also appears to be a difference in the handling of white balance, with the R3D NE files giving more consistent results, independently of the WB setting used at the point of capture. There’s also a difference when shooting: N-Log mode allows you to use Auto WB (which, due to its unpredictability, isn’t really best practice but can be a handy way to get something close to usable if you’re moving between indoor and outdoor shooting, for instance). If you adjust the WB of the Raw clip during your edit, that single WB value is applied to the whole clip, and any variation is lost, so the usefulness of being able to shoot with Auto WB becomes questionable.

Finally, N-Raw offers a “high quality” and “normal” recording mode, with the latter cutting the bitrate in half, reducing how much storage your footage will take up. R3D NE doesn’t provide any such option; it always takes up (exactly) the same amount of space as N-Raw’s “high quality” option.

The third option

The ZR also shoots ProRes Raw, which is compatible with pretty much all professional editing software, but also produces much larger files. Despite the format adding support for lens correction profiles, Nikon doesn’t appear to have implemented that feature for this camera (or for the Z6III). It also uses N-Log, rather than Log3G10.

The takeaway

Each Raw format the ZR supports has its own pros and cons, but to us, R3D NE appears to be the most well-considered option, despite the few workflow annoyances that come with shooting it.

Whichever Raw format you choose, it’s likely best to pick one and stick with it for most situations. As we found with our test scene, they all offer similar image quality, so your choice can be dictated by how you want to shoot and ease-of-use considerations.

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