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| Movies With D800 - Page 1 | |
| How well does the D800 work with movie production? | Rating: 
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| Posted: Fri Jul 13th, 2012 13:51 |
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1st Post |
Graham Whistler
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As some of you may know I am publish steam railway DVDs and BluRay (see http://www.gwpvideo.com). I shoot using Sony Pro High Def Camcorders 1920x1080 25fps PAL UK Standard. Results from the Sony Equipment produce very high quality BluRay discs and the DVDs are good to. We use Adobe Premier and Encore CS5 and now are on the new CS6. So how well will the D800 compare with our Sony equipment for shooting steam railway DVDs? For a start the D800 uses the same 1920x1080 25fps PAL settings, finished footage shows no advantage in terms of colour or sharpness but fine detail is of a very high order. On time line with Sony pro AVCHD footage it is a fair match but no better. You can only shoot using live view, very hard to use out doors in sun even using a loop it is not easy to check focus and compose. The D800 does not have steady-cam so hand held movie is very unsteady and not suitable for professional use. Hand holding with the Sony has state of art steady-cam and first-class eye level viewfinder and well as fold out LCD so you have best of both types of viewing. To get steady pix with the D800 you must use a pro video tripod and quality fluid head all the time. The D800 manual settings are tucked away in Menus and not easy to get to when you are doing action shooting. It is almost impossible to do smooth zooming with still photography type zoom lenses. Pro movie cameras have good progressive motor driven zoom lenses made for the job. Auto focus sort of works but is very poor compared with using the D800 camera for stills. One would need a pro follow focus device and these cost serious money and require skill to use. Sound is another story. The D800 needs to be wired into a pro mixer and sound system with quality mikes. The built in mike on D800 is only mono and wind noise outdoors is a night-mare. I do have the Nikon ME-1 Stereo Mike with wind shield fits on hot-shoe. It is OK in light wind but heavy wind is bad news. Sound quality is OK but for interviews you would still need full pro mike set-up. If you were a news photographer on a solo hot story your D800 stills pix would be world beating but any D800 movie better than nothing but not up to the standard you could get with any pro camcorder and even some of the sub £1000 little camcorders could do better.(THE D800 IS THE DSLR I HAVE HAVE OWNED TO DATE BUT NOT FOR MOVIE) WHAT DO OTHER USERS THINK?
____________________ Graham Whistler |
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| Posted: Fri Jul 13th, 2012 14:09 |
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2nd Post |
Robert
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Thank you for taking the time to report on your findings Graham, not an unqualified thumbs up then. No doubt the D800 video will have a place but it's not a substitute for the real thing it seems.
____________________ Robert. |
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| Posted: Fri Jul 13th, 2012 14:52 |
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3rd Post |
TomOC
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Never really bought into the concept of the SLR as a movie camera. Seems that the form factor of all the video cameras is far superior to a bulky SLR, no?
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
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| Posted: Fri Jul 13th, 2012 16:53 |
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4th Post |
Eric
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Thanks for that, Graham. It comes as no surprise to me ( being a 16mm film maker of old) that the D800 doesn't pass muster. I have been vocal here on this issue ever since Nikon introduced the video feature on their DSLRs. The ergonomics are all wrong. No matter how good the IQ, you will always be fighting the equipment. In fact, this whole subject leaves me a little annoyed...that I have to pay for this feature that adds unecessary cost and complicates the still camera I want. It's the main reason I have resisted upgrading my D3. It's about time Nikon started a module approach to cameras...where we buy the base unit and then buy add on software functionality modules for the extra features that we want. 
____________________ Eric |
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| Posted: Fri Jul 13th, 2012 17:16 |
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5th Post |
Graham Whistler
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Eric you are so right ergonomics are all important. When hand holding even more so we use Sony's NX5E medium sized AVCHD, x3 CMOS Chips, Camcorders they are very well balanced for hand holding and you can pull the eye-piece into you face,with hands holding the camera body firmly on both sides. The rocker zoom is well placed on the right sided hand grip. IE a lot of thought has gone into the design. The modern steadycam is very good too. There are two XLR sockets for pro sound cables, the D800 has a small stereo 3.5mm mini-jack, very prone to handling damage. With any DSLR you need to hold it infront of your face and try to see into the LCD, even with a loupe in place it is very hard to get a steady hold and any camera movement on a modern 40inch+ HD TV shows up.
____________________ Graham Whistler |
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14th, 2012 08:12 |
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6th Post |
Graham Whistler
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These images show some of the rigs that photographers are forced to use to get movies with their DSLRs. I have a Hoodman and it is very good for looking at the LCD in bright light outdoors but not so good for seeing detail focusing when shooting video. Also please note no sound Mike or mixer in the pix. Yes shooting video with a DSLR needs two people! Attachment: Hoodman.jpg (Downloaded 104 times)
____________________ Graham Whistler |
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14th, 2012 08:15 |
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7th Post |
Squarerigger
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I use a DSLR because I want the best tool I can afford to take quality photographs. If I want to take videos, I will buy a video camera so I can get the best quality videos. It's like building a swiss knife. No offense to anyone who uses one, but a swiss knife does many things ok but none really as well as a single application tool.
____________________ -------------------------------------------- Gary |
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14th, 2012 09:35 |
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8th Post |
Graham Whistler
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This is the Sony NX5 AVCHD Camcorder I use for shooting my railway films. 1920x1010 full HD quality images suitable for publishing BluRay. Very good steady-cam if you need to hand hold but I use video tripod with good fluid head as much as possible. These camera are solid state and have twin card slots and take x2 SanDisc Extreme SD Cards 32gig with 45GB/s write speed, able to store up to 3 hrs of full HD Video on each card, total 6 hrs none stop filming! Cost is about £4000 plus another £1000.00 for a good stereo mike in pro wind shield. IE about what you would pay for a Nikon D3X and it does for video what a top Nikon DSLR does for stills photography. Attachment: Sony NX5 Camcorder.jpg (Downloaded 104 times)
____________________ Graham Whistler |
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14th, 2012 11:24 |
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9th Post |
Doug
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Graham Whistler wrote:These images show some of the rigs that photographers are forced to use to get movies with their DSLRs. I have a Hoodman and it is very good for looking at the LCD in bright light outdoors but not so good for seeing detail focusing when shooting video. Also please note no sound Mike or mixer in the pix. Yes shooting video with a DSLR needs two people! Those who eschewed Video long after most of us declared film dead have long since become accustomed to these sorts of contraptions and would find plenty of flaws with your Sony (mostly relating to the look of the image) This is what some of those guys once used to obtain the look they wanted with the convenience of digital editing etc;  At the end of the day it's about choosing the right tool for the job (visit http://philipbloom.net/ to learn lots about the pros and cons of shooting with various cameras) BTW, Graham please - it's a Loupe (sorry)
____________________ Recent & Popular posts ProCapture | Genius on Demand Blog |
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| Posted: Sat Jul 14th, 2012 12:02 |
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10th Post |
Doug
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BTW something like this would negate the need for the loupe or this amazing external recorder (apparently the D800 does amazingly clean hdmi output) http://www.sounddevices.com/products/pix240/  But what you really need is this setup 
____________________ Recent & Popular posts ProCapture | Genius on Demand Blog |
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