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Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. Personally I think RED cameras are overhyped and are a major reaso

Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. Personally I think RED cameras are overhyped and are a major reason most netflix shows all look and feel the same. I don't think its the colour grading or lenses - its something about the camera itself that just feels shit and doesn't give me the same access to a scene the same way something like sony's HDVS from 30 years ago does.[1] [0] https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000579527-Cameras-Image-Capture-Requirements-and-Best-Practices https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63flkf3S1bE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63flkf3S1bE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW26YMe8iUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW26YMe8iUQ

tomcam 3y ago
It appears to me they accept many RED cameras? https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000579527-Cameras-Image-Capture-Requirements-and-Best-Practices#h_01G6KEYFG76GRKVMJS382H5638 https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...
pixelesque 3y ago
That's because Nikon don't have a cinema line of cameras, and the cameras they do have have only very recently added support for higher-end video features like log and ProRes RAW support.
atoav 3y ago
Red cameras are overhyped, but picture quality is not the issue. It is very likely that what you describe is more due stylistic differences in lighting, color grading and editing than due to the camera itself — coming from someone who professionally had to match colors on films shot on multiple different cameras on more than one occasion. Reliability is the main reason why Red cameras are overhyped, but you get good pictures and specs for the price, just like with black magic cameras but a notch higher. Most DOPs I know would go fo ARRI if given free choice.
- hef19898 3y ago
  As a photographer I know next to nothing about film, let alone cinema. Hence the question, is ARRI gear really as good as people say, and as expensive?
  - atoav 3y ago
    The thing about ARRI is, yeah their gear is expensive, but it is just an incredible combination of good design and stellar engineering. Their cameras are surprisingly straightforward to use, definitely easier than a RED or Sony (with their "every-surface-needs-to-be-covered-in-buttons-but-few-are-where-you-would-expect-them"-mentality). Their light gear is just stellar. I have seen ARRI HMI lamps that took 40 years of beatings and still worked flawlessly. The thing is, sure ARRI is expensive, but depending on your production losing a day might be more expensive than buying a whole new camera. Generally my experience is that a lot of the price of high end gear goes towards reliability, this is true for most other fields of tech as well.
    - julik 3y ago
      FWIW "every surface needs to be covered in buttons" is exactly how a Canon person™ once explained to me why they are not a Nikon person. So that checks out wrt this acquisition, at least.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        The only thing more hilarious than the pointless Canon vs. Nikon quabble are when you throw in Leica shooters into the mix.
        ein0p 3y ago
        Are there any? I think 99.9% of them are Leica “owners” rather than “shooters”. You can’t even properly manually focus on a 60mp sensor with a rangefinder.
audunw 3y ago
Maybe that's nostalgia.. I personally think the clips you shared look awful compared to any modern camera. I seriously doubt the average person notices any difference between RED cameras and any other modern camera with roughly the same properties.
- jajko 3y ago
  Not maybe, movies are simply shot in different ways, people expect different things. Nothing in this world is static. Now its perfectly fine to dislike 'modern' approach, but in digital era that has absolutely nothing to do with some lens/sensor combo and everything how director decides given scene or whole movie should 'feel'.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Yeah Netflix definitely has a directing "style" across lots of its shows. Two things I've noticed are lots of shaky-cam shot as though someone's spying on the scene, when it's just the camera; and often a top down view from high up with loads of detail to showcase some visually impressive event, in mild slow-mo.
    - foobarian 3y ago
      When the hammer is invented, of course you will be eager to solve problems that look like nails. I feel like this happened after quadcopters got good.
- lightedman 3y ago
  You can tell the difference between RED and other camera makers just by checking the black levels (because RED has horrid IR filtering and so you get a bit of picture greying.) It's really noticeable when you fire off a DPSS LASER at 532nm. You can see both the IR beam and the converted visible light beam, making the LASER appear a weird green-purple color.
- com2kid 3y ago
  For the 1990s, that Sony demo video looks amazing. The colors pop, skin pores are visible, brush strokes are visible! The colors and styles are very 90s, but it was the 90s so things are expected to look that way.
Almondsetat 3y ago
Any RAW image that comes out of a modern digital sensor can be made to look like anything else, as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated. They look the same because they are lit, edited and color graded the same
- archerx 3y ago
  > as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated I'm interested in this, do you have a link?
  - kworks 3y ago
    Some Yedlin links. I found his process to be methodical, precise, thorough and definitive. The question as to whether there is any perceptible visual difference between film and video that has been post-produced by an expert was definitively answered for me. Resolution Demos: https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html On Color Science for Filmmakers: https://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html https://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html
    - foldr 3y ago
      Pet peeve, by why do people persist in using wide aperture closeups to test resolution? If almost everything in the frame is out of focus, then duh, you're not going to notice much difference between 'high resolution' and 'very high resolution'.
      - ruined 3y ago
        past f8 on full frame (and wider on smaller frames) you run into diffraction, so you actually do get more detail with a slightly wider aperture. i only glanced at the links but it seems about right. also, everyone knows what a face looks like
        foldr 3y ago
        Sure, but why not shoot a subject at infinity? (I said "wide aperture closeups".) It's hard to even know which tiny part of the face is actually in perfect focus. And at the resolutions tested, you will need perfect focus to see any difference.
kthartic 3y ago
I don't know how old you are, but as a younger millennial these look pretty awful to me (no disrespect). I'm sure nostalgia plays a part. I feel the same way about videos/sci-fi shows from the 2000s - none of the modern stuff quite feels the same. But as another commenter said, I don't think it's the camera itself - it's the stylistic changes in lighting, camera angles, direction, etc. Each decade has a distinct 'feel' - films/shows in the 80s don't feel like the 90s, or the 2000s like the 2010s, etc.
- seanw444 3y ago
  It seems to be too much now to me. Overproduced maybe is the word? Too vibrant of coloration, too much lighting, too much movement. The best way I can put it is that new shows and movies feel "plastic" compared to older stuff.
  - prox 3y ago
    I think it’s called the Netflix look. If you look it up you get several discussions on color grading and other matters.
Applejinx 3y ago
Watching all that Sony stuff. Part of what's giving you that effect is not the resolution, or color accuracy etc: it's that you're looking at what is really a very primitive system. It's the analog vs. digital all over again, but with video. More than that, it's compressed video, versus a more immediate but more primitive analog system. What I'm seeing of RED suggests it's all about sensor resolutions, but compression is always a point of contention and color space is an issue. If you're digitally compressing data like this and running into an area where there are challenges, you're running into areas where the algorithms get twitchy: they're designed to optimize for certain things and you can throw pathological image sequences, pathological colors, at them. Some of the challenges inherent in getting really high sensor resolution out of a RED are irrelevant to old Sony analog HD camera technology, apples and oranges.
oven9342 3y ago
When the camera pans. I find it unnerving. I don’t enjoy watching that pixelated panning. I blame it on the digital recordings. It might probably look better if they recorded it on film but no producer seems to be addressing my whimsical preferences
- herdcall 3y ago
  I think what you're seeing is due to bandwidth limitations: when the picture pans the info changes rapidly and places a bigger demand on the bandwidth, so streamed shows will suffer in quality and show pixelation. If this is what you're seeing, it has nothing to do with the content itself, it will be fine if you watch it directly from disk.
  - eschneider 3y ago
    This. Digital video sends a key frame every N frame and deltas in between (well, slightly more complicated...) Lose a frame or two due to bandwidth and you see motion tearing.
  - oven9342 3y ago
    I notice it on TV as well.
- kbf 3y ago
  The Olympics are a live event, delaying the broadcast by days to cater to your niche nitpick about image quality would indeed be whimsical
replwoacause 3y ago
Has anyone done an analysis into what gives Netflix shows that strange look? It is uncanny valley like for me, so I avoid them altogether. I assumed it must be a blend of camera choice, lighting, and post-processing, and its just awful.
- dfedbeef 3y ago
  Netflix is the minor leagues. People who do well there don't tend to stay there.
- kranke155 3y ago
  It’s the rushed post process. You can go on r/colourists and ask. You might be able to find some old posts from people who worked on these things explaining it. It’s 100% not the camera. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was shot on RED. You can do virtually anything with digital cameras these days. Steve Yedlin proved he could make digital look like film beyond anyone’s ability to distinguish them. Netflix just rushes everything so it’s all a similar level of not good.
tiffanyh 3y ago
Nikon doesn't do video. Referencing the Netflix approved vendor list is misleading, because they aren't in the cinematic video business.
stephen_g 3y ago
No, why “everything looks the same” is 100% down to lens, lighting and grading choices. Part of it is that modern lenses are incredibly accurate and much better technically than they used to be - a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts, since they have “visual character” instead of being so clean.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts Isn't this confounded by who chooses to buck the trend? IMO, it's the very skilled DPs who are not only skilled, have earned enough social capital to experiment and have excellent reasons for using old soviet lenses, or lenses designed for use on the moon or some other exotic origin story. This self-selecting bunch are likely to produce outstanding work regardless of the equipment.
kranke155 3y ago
The RED cameras are perfectly capable of delivering great picture quality and good color science. The "Netflix look" doesn't come from cameras, but from the fact that everything in their cheaper productions is rushed, including the color grading. Portrait of a Lady on Fire for instance, was shot on RED cameras at 8K. And it's one of the most beautiful digital films ever made, IMO.
- saltminer 3y ago
  I loved that movie! It truly is gorgeous, right up there with Blade Runner IMO. I just wish they'd release it in 4k, I'd re-buy it in a heartbeat.
tivert 3y ago
> Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. I looked at that list and did some Googling, and it looks like Nikon just doesn't make video cameras like the other vendors. All they make are DSLRs that do a little bit of video. This Quora answer (https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-high-end-Nikon-and-Canon-video-cameras/answer/Dave-Haynie https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-...) bluntly states; "Nikon has never sold a dedicated camcorder of any format."
- sib 3y ago
  Nikon also makes mirrorless cameras that do video a lot better than their DLSRs did (especially, for example, the Z9). But, yes, they don't make dedicated camcorders...
gorkish 3y ago
I think you are mistaking stylistic choices for something technical. Netflix shows look and feel the same because they are shovelware, produced to look and feel the same. This is part of why they have style guides and approved equipment lists, but as far as the sensors are concerned -- any modern sensor is up to the task. There are no Nikon video cameras on the list because Nikon does not make video cameras, although I guess now they do.
fngjdflmdflg 3y ago
Color grading always changes the colors in post anyway. Film movies often looks better than digital to my eyes but i think that is at least partly because color grading did not exist like it does now and there was no push to make every object "pop" by being oversaturated. To me, Film is more likely to give you a single scene in each frame while color graded digital movies often seem to be made of several disparate scenes cobbled together. Movies from the past used less greenscreening in favor of matte paintings which were often included in the scene they were used itself rather than edited in or they were the only shot in the scene. You can make digital film look however you want, even to look like film, but most Netflix shows apparently do not opt for that.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Agreed, I hate the way a lot of their stuff looks. It's OK for TV but a lot of their film stuff looks sterile to me. I think that's part of why the Arri digital camera has a lot of fans. I got my first Nikon camera a few years ago after all previous ones being Canon. At first I was a little taken aback by how things looked slightly smeared when you zoomed into the individual pixels...but I rapidly came to love it. Perhaps their sensors/glass are less 'perfect' but I love more of the pictures I take with it.
m463 3y ago
I remember first watching 4k HDR films (I remember gemini man in particular) and it looked different from previous films and I had to adapt. maybe too high res? Or maybe HDR eliminated artifacts like bloom or something that seemed to make it too perfect.

tomcam 3y ago

It appears to me they accept many RED cameras? https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000579527-Cameras-Image-Capture-Requirements-and-Best-Practices#h_01G6KEYFG76GRKVMJS382H5638 https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...

pixelesque 3y ago

That's because Nikon don't have a cinema line of cameras, and the cameras they do have have only very recently added support for higher-end video features like log and ProRes RAW support.

atoav 3y ago

Red cameras are overhyped, but picture quality is not the issue. It is very likely that what you describe is more due stylistic differences in lighting, color grading and editing than due to the camera itself — coming from someone who professionally had to match colors on films shot on multiple different cameras on more than one occasion. Reliability is the main reason why Red cameras are overhyped, but you get good pictures and specs for the price, just like with black magic cameras but a notch higher. Most DOPs I know would go fo ARRI if given free choice.

hef19898 3y ago
As a photographer I know next to nothing about film, let alone cinema. Hence the question, is ARRI gear really as good as people say, and as expensive?
- atoav 3y ago
  The thing about ARRI is, yeah their gear is expensive, but it is just an incredible combination of good design and stellar engineering. Their cameras are surprisingly straightforward to use, definitely easier than a RED or Sony (with their "every-surface-needs-to-be-covered-in-buttons-but-few-are-where-you-would-expect-them"-mentality). Their light gear is just stellar. I have seen ARRI HMI lamps that took 40 years of beatings and still worked flawlessly. The thing is, sure ARRI is expensive, but depending on your production losing a day might be more expensive than buying a whole new camera. Generally my experience is that a lot of the price of high end gear goes towards reliability, this is true for most other fields of tech as well.
  - julik 3y ago
    FWIW "every surface needs to be covered in buttons" is exactly how a Canon person™ once explained to me why they are not a Nikon person. So that checks out wrt this acquisition, at least.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      The only thing more hilarious than the pointless Canon vs. Nikon quabble are when you throw in Leica shooters into the mix.
      - ein0p 3y ago
        Are there any? I think 99.9% of them are Leica “owners” rather than “shooters”. You can’t even properly manually focus on a 60mp sensor with a rangefinder.

audunw 3y ago

Maybe that's nostalgia.. I personally think the clips you shared look awful compared to any modern camera. I seriously doubt the average person notices any difference between RED cameras and any other modern camera with roughly the same properties.

jajko 3y ago
Not maybe, movies are simply shot in different ways, people expect different things. Nothing in this world is static. Now its perfectly fine to dislike 'modern' approach, but in digital era that has absolutely nothing to do with some lens/sensor combo and everything how director decides given scene or whole movie should 'feel'.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Yeah Netflix definitely has a directing "style" across lots of its shows. Two things I've noticed are lots of shaky-cam shot as though someone's spying on the scene, when it's just the camera; and often a top down view from high up with loads of detail to showcase some visually impressive event, in mild slow-mo.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    When the hammer is invented, of course you will be eager to solve problems that look like nails. I feel like this happened after quadcopters got good.
lightedman 3y ago
You can tell the difference between RED and other camera makers just by checking the black levels (because RED has horrid IR filtering and so you get a bit of picture greying.) It's really noticeable when you fire off a DPSS LASER at 532nm. You can see both the IR beam and the converted visible light beam, making the LASER appear a weird green-purple color.
com2kid 3y ago
For the 1990s, that Sony demo video looks amazing. The colors pop, skin pores are visible, brush strokes are visible! The colors and styles are very 90s, but it was the 90s so things are expected to look that way.

Almondsetat 3y ago

Any RAW image that comes out of a modern digital sensor can be made to look like anything else, as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated. They look the same because they are lit, edited and color graded the same

archerx 3y ago
> as Steve Yedlin thoroughly demonstrated I'm interested in this, do you have a link?
- kworks 3y ago
  Some Yedlin links. I found his process to be methodical, precise, thorough and definitive. The question as to whether there is any perceptible visual difference between film and video that has been post-produced by an expert was definitively answered for me. Resolution Demos: https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html On Color Science for Filmmakers: https://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html https://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/index.html
  - foldr 3y ago
    Pet peeve, by why do people persist in using wide aperture closeups to test resolution? If almost everything in the frame is out of focus, then duh, you're not going to notice much difference between 'high resolution' and 'very high resolution'.
    - ruined 3y ago
      past f8 on full frame (and wider on smaller frames) you run into diffraction, so you actually do get more detail with a slightly wider aperture. i only glanced at the links but it seems about right. also, everyone knows what a face looks like
      - foldr 3y ago
        Sure, but why not shoot a subject at infinity? (I said "wide aperture closeups".) It's hard to even know which tiny part of the face is actually in perfect focus. And at the resolutions tested, you will need perfect focus to see any difference.

kthartic 3y ago

I don't know how old you are, but as a younger millennial these look pretty awful to me (no disrespect). I'm sure nostalgia plays a part. I feel the same way about videos/sci-fi shows from the 2000s - none of the modern stuff quite feels the same. But as another commenter said, I don't think it's the camera itself - it's the stylistic changes in lighting, camera angles, direction, etc. Each decade has a distinct 'feel' - films/shows in the 80s don't feel like the 90s, or the 2000s like the 2010s, etc.

seanw444 3y ago
It seems to be too much now to me. Overproduced maybe is the word? Too vibrant of coloration, too much lighting, too much movement. The best way I can put it is that new shows and movies feel "plastic" compared to older stuff.
- prox 3y ago
  I think it’s called the Netflix look. If you look it up you get several discussions on color grading and other matters.

Applejinx 3y ago

Watching all that Sony stuff. Part of what's giving you that effect is not the resolution, or color accuracy etc: it's that you're looking at what is really a very primitive system. It's the analog vs. digital all over again, but with video. More than that, it's compressed video, versus a more immediate but more primitive analog system. What I'm seeing of RED suggests it's all about sensor resolutions, but compression is always a point of contention and color space is an issue. If you're digitally compressing data like this and running into an area where there are challenges, you're running into areas where the algorithms get twitchy: they're designed to optimize for certain things and you can throw pathological image sequences, pathological colors, at them. Some of the challenges inherent in getting really high sensor resolution out of a RED are irrelevant to old Sony analog HD camera technology, apples and oranges.

oven9342 3y ago

When the camera pans. I find it unnerving. I don’t enjoy watching that pixelated panning. I blame it on the digital recordings. It might probably look better if they recorded it on film but no producer seems to be addressing my whimsical preferences

herdcall 3y ago
I think what you're seeing is due to bandwidth limitations: when the picture pans the info changes rapidly and places a bigger demand on the bandwidth, so streamed shows will suffer in quality and show pixelation. If this is what you're seeing, it has nothing to do with the content itself, it will be fine if you watch it directly from disk.
- eschneider 3y ago
  This. Digital video sends a key frame every N frame and deltas in between (well, slightly more complicated...) Lose a frame or two due to bandwidth and you see motion tearing.
- oven9342 3y ago
  I notice it on TV as well.
kbf 3y ago
The Olympics are a live event, delaying the broadcast by days to cater to your niche nitpick about image quality would indeed be whimsical

replwoacause 3y ago

Has anyone done an analysis into what gives Netflix shows that strange look? It is uncanny valley like for me, so I avoid them altogether. I assumed it must be a blend of camera choice, lighting, and post-processing, and its just awful.

dfedbeef 3y ago
Netflix is the minor leagues. People who do well there don't tend to stay there.
kranke155 3y ago
It’s the rushed post process. You can go on r/colourists and ask. You might be able to find some old posts from people who worked on these things explaining it. It’s 100% not the camera. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was shot on RED. You can do virtually anything with digital cameras these days. Steve Yedlin proved he could make digital look like film beyond anyone’s ability to distinguish them. Netflix just rushes everything so it’s all a similar level of not good.

tiffanyh 3y ago

Nikon doesn't do video. Referencing the Netflix approved vendor list is misleading, because they aren't in the cinematic video business.

stephen_g 3y ago

No, why “everything looks the same” is 100% down to lens, lighting and grading choices. Part of it is that modern lenses are incredibly accurate and much better technically than they used to be - a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts, since they have “visual character” instead of being so clean.

sangnoir 3y ago
> a lot of the movies that people praise the photography of are now using vintage lenses that are 30-50 years old modified to modern lens mounts Isn't this confounded by who chooses to buck the trend? IMO, it's the very skilled DPs who are not only skilled, have earned enough social capital to experiment and have excellent reasons for using old soviet lenses, or lenses designed for use on the moon or some other exotic origin story. This self-selecting bunch are likely to produce outstanding work regardless of the equipment.

kranke155 3y ago

The RED cameras are perfectly capable of delivering great picture quality and good color science. The "Netflix look" doesn't come from cameras, but from the fact that everything in their cheaper productions is rushed, including the color grading. Portrait of a Lady on Fire for instance, was shot on RED cameras at 8K. And it's one of the most beautiful digital films ever made, IMO.

saltminer 3y ago
I loved that movie! It truly is gorgeous, right up there with Blade Runner IMO. I just wish they'd release it in 4k, I'd re-buy it in a heartbeat.

tivert 3y ago

> Pretty interesting. If you look on netflix approved camera list[0] there are none from Nikon. I looked at that list and did some Googling, and it looks like Nikon just doesn't make video cameras like the other vendors. All they make are DSLRs that do a little bit of video. This Quora answer (https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-high-end-Nikon-and-Canon-video-cameras/answer/Dave-Haynie https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-...) bluntly states; "Nikon has never sold a dedicated camcorder of any format."

sib 3y ago
Nikon also makes mirrorless cameras that do video a lot better than their DLSRs did (especially, for example, the Z9). But, yes, they don't make dedicated camcorders...

gorkish 3y ago

I think you are mistaking stylistic choices for something technical. Netflix shows look and feel the same because they are shovelware, produced to look and feel the same. This is part of why they have style guides and approved equipment lists, but as far as the sensors are concerned -- any modern sensor is up to the task. There are no Nikon video cameras on the list because Nikon does not make video cameras, although I guess now they do.

fngjdflmdflg 3y ago

Color grading always changes the colors in post anyway. Film movies often looks better than digital to my eyes but i think that is at least partly because color grading did not exist like it does now and there was no push to make every object "pop" by being oversaturated. To me, Film is more likely to give you a single scene in each frame while color graded digital movies often seem to be made of several disparate scenes cobbled together. Movies from the past used less greenscreening in favor of matte paintings which were often included in the scene they were used itself rather than edited in or they were the only shot in the scene. You can make digital film look however you want, even to look like film, but most Netflix shows apparently do not opt for that.

anigbrowl 3y ago

Agreed, I hate the way a lot of their stuff looks. It's OK for TV but a lot of their film stuff looks sterile to me. I think that's part of why the Arri digital camera has a lot of fans. I got my first Nikon camera a few years ago after all previous ones being Canon. At first I was a little taken aback by how things looked slightly smeared when you zoomed into the individual pixels...but I rapidly came to love it. Perhaps their sensors/glass are less 'perfect' but I love more of the pictures I take with it.

m463 3y ago

I remember first watching 4k HDR films (I remember gemini man in particular) and it looked different from previous films and I had to adapt. maybe too high res? Or maybe HDR eliminated artifacts like bloom or something that seemed to make it too perfect.