The ZR has a lot of recording formats: R3D NE, N-RAW, ProRes RAW HQ, ProRes 422 HQ, H.265 and H.264. Having the choice is great, but deciding which one to shoot in is hard.
The biggest gap is between R3D NE, which is RAW, and H.265, which is compressed video. And with Ver.2.00, H.265 is due to get the same RED colour settings as R3D NE. Since that may change how the two are used, I want to sort out the differences now.
I bought the ZR myself and use it. This comparison is based on Nikon’s official specs and guides, not on shooting the same scene in both formats. Ver.2.00 hasn’t been released as of 1 November.
The short answer: which suits you?
| If you care most about | Better fit |
|---|---|
| Pushing colour and exposure a long way later | R3D NE |
| Working alongside RED cameras | R3D NE |
| Keeping file sizes down for YouTube or travel videos | H.265 |
| Recording for a long time without stopping | H.265 |
| Watching footage right away, with less editing | H.265 |
| Light files, but with RED’s colour settings | H.265 after Ver.2.00 (once released) |
R3D NE is RAW, meant for grading later
R3D NE first. It’s one of the reasons to choose the ZR at all.
Nikon’s R3D NE guide (Japanese, checked 1 November 2026) lists these points:
- 15+ stops of dynamic range, rich 12-bit tonality and RED’s colour rendering
- Straight out of the camera, it won’t play back with correct colour and tone; editing and grading in supported software is required
- On the ZR, R3D NE only works in M (manual) shooting mode
- The data is large, so you need a CFexpress Type B card that can sustain fast write speeds (the same goes for the other RAW formats)
Its strength is that it holds up even when you push the colour a long way. In return, the footage looks flat straight out of the camera, and finishing it in DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro is part of the deal. Since it only works in M mode, you set the exposure yourself too.
It’s a format for people who can put in the effort both when shooting and afterwards.
The card is another thing to watch. The ZR’s other slot takes microSD, but R3D NE, N-RAW and ProRes RAW HQ can’t be recorded to microSD, and neither can ProRes 422 HQ (online manual). If you want to shoot RAW, a CFexpress Type B card is a must.
The storage gap is close to tenfold
Once you pick R3D NE, the next thing that hits you is storage. Here are Nikon’s published figures for how long 1TB of media lasts.
R3D NE at 6K 60p is about 35 minutes; H.265 10-bit at 5.4K 60p is about 330 minutes. Resolution and format differ, so you can’t say H.265 is nine times more efficient. Even so, the load on your cards and computer differs by an order of magnitude.
Thirty-five minutes on a 1TB card means an hour of shooting needs a second card. After the shoot, storage keeps following you: copying from card to computer, where to keep it, backups, and playback in your editor. Among the RAW formats, N-RAW at normal quality is about half the size of R3D NE (about 69 minutes on 1TB) (choosing a recording format, Japanese).
I checked six short clips I’d shot on my ZR of a pair of earphones on my desk (H.265 10-bit, 5.4K 60p, about 46 seconds in total). They came to about 1.2GB per minute. Nikon’s figure (about 330 minutes on 1TB) works out to about 3GB per minute, so mine were much smaller. H.265 file size depends on what you film, and this was a scene with little movement. At Nikon’s figure, a 256GB card holds about 85 minutes.
Ver.2.00 puts H.265 in between
So far, the answer is simple: R3D NE for grading freedom, H.265 for convenience. Ver.2.00 looks set to change that.
Log3G10 and REDWideGamutRGB, which only R3D NE uses today, become available in H.265 as well. Nikon says this delivers “compact file sizes with high color-grading latitude” (Ver.2.00 announcement).
You don’t want to deal with files as heavy as RAW, but you still want RED’s colour settings for your grade. An option that fits exactly that way of shooting looks to be on its way. I’ve covered what Ver.2.00 adds in the Ver.2.00 article.
The same colour settings won’t make it RAW
The thing to keep in mind is that even with the same colour settings, H.265 isn’t RAW. R3D NE is 12-bit RAW; H.265 is compressed video.
So how big the gap is in situations like these won’t be clear until it’s released and someone shoots both to compare:
- Lifting shadows that came out dark
- Pulling back a sky that’s close to blowing out
- Shifting colours a long way
- Noise when shooting in the dark
So which should you shoot?
If I had to split them today:
- R3D NE: days when you want to grade the footage as a piece of work. When the shoot is short, you have time to edit, and you have a CFexpress card.
- H.265: travel, vlogs and YouTube. Long shooting days, or when you want to use the footage straight away. It works on microSD too.
I don’t own a CFexpress card, so right now I only shoot H.265. When Ver.2.00 arrives, I’ll try H.265 with Log3G10 and add what I find to this article.