Is the Nikon ZR Enough Reason to Switch to Nikon for Video?

Nikon now owns RED, and the first camera to come out of that deal is the Nikon ZR, a compact body that records RED's raw codec for a little over $2,000. If you shoot video for clients or your own films, that pairing puts a codec once tied to cinema camera budgets inside a body small enough to balance on a basic gimbal.

Curren Sheldon has spent the past decade shooting films and commercials mostly on Canon and Lumix bodies, with some ARRI and RED work mixed in, and he lays out five reasons he'd now pick Nikon for that work. The first is the codec. Sheldon owned a RED Helium and shot a feature documentary on it, so he knows the look well. The Nikon ZR records a 12-bit version of REDCODE RAW instead of the 16-bit version in RED's larger cameras, yet he finds it keeps the character of those files. You can still change white balance and ISO after the shoot, and the footage edits smoothly.

His second reason is harder to measure. Camera talk usually circles around color accuracy, color science, or how far you can push a file. Sheldon focuses instead on how dense the colors are straight out of the camera, especially bright reds, greens, yellows, and oranges, which many sensors render thin. He doesn't consider himself a strong colorist, and he argues the ZR gives you a thick enough digital negative to get rich images without advanced grading skills.

Lens choice comes third, and the mount itself is the more interesting part. The Z mount has a 16mm flange distance, about 2mm shorter than Sony E-mount, which leaves room for a thin adapter between them. With the Viltrox E-Z AF Lens Mount Adapter Sheldon uses, or the Megadap ETZ21 Pro+, you can mount E-mount lenses on a Z body and keep the whole package small. That opens a large catalog of third-party glass on top of native Z-mount options from makers like Viltrox, one of Sheldon's favorites.

Nikon's route to RED raw ran through a courtroom. In 2022, RED sued Nikon, claiming the N-RAW format in the Nikon Z9 infringed its patents on compressed raw recorded inside the camera. Many in the industry saw those patents as the reason so few hybrid cameras recorded compressed raw internally. The suit was dismissed in 2023, and in March 2024, Nikon announced it was acquiring RED outright. The ZR is the first small body to show the result. It fits a wider shift in which raw video, once reserved for dedicated cinema rigs or external recorders, keeps moving into hybrid cameras that also shoot stills. If you plan to work this way, sort out media and drive space before the first paid job. The ZR records to CFexpress Type B, and high-bitrate raw fills cards and hard drives far faster than the compressed codecs most hybrid shooters are used to. Plan your offload and backup routine around that pace, so a long shoot day doesn't stall while you wait for cards to clear.

His fourth reason is the ZR's design. The body is minimalist and clean, it rigs up easily, and it uses a fast partially stacked sensor. Its standout feature is a 4-inch rear screen, a big step up from the 3-inch screens on most mirrorless cameras. It's bright enough to replace an external monitor in many setups, which keeps a small rig small. Sheldon adds a grip to give himself more to hold. He's open about the downsides, too. Shooting 6K REDCODE RAW at 24 fps fills a terabyte in only a couple of hours, and the ZR is Nikon's only video-first mirrorless body, while Sony and Canon each offer several.

What Sheldon hopes Nikon builds next is in the video above.