Nikon D800 with video features

[Mark Kenfield]

Originally Posted by Glen Vandermolen

Ted, if you are correct, this is quite the cinema DSLR. I like the broadcast quality video (assuming it is truly recorded in-camera). 4:2:2 is...wow. And for around $3,000.
All that's missing are XLR inputs.

Pick up one of the PIX 220/240 recorders and you'll have 4:2:2 ProRes and XLR inputs to compliment the full-frame sensor.

Originally Posted by Glen Vandermolen

I'm DSLR illiterate.
Is this camera better for video recording compared to a Nikon D4, Canon 5D, or any other DSLR?
Will it still be susceptible to overheating in video mode?
Will it still have moire problems?
Does it record in-camera in 4:2:2?
Are the audio levels manually controllable?

You can see a bit of moire on the bridge tiles at 0:47 in the 'Joy Ride' video. Whether that's from the camera itself or from the internet compression, we can't say just yet.

[Ted Ramasola]

Originally Posted by Mark Kenfield

You can see a bit of moire on the bridge tiles at 0:47 in the 'Joy Ride' video. Whether that's from the camera itself or from the internet compression, we can't say just yet.

OLPF implementation is a tricky thing, for one, the fact that they decided to come out with 2 versions of this cam shows that it must be aggressive enough to soften the sensor for wide landscape work, also,
I think they had to balance it to be not too aggressive to be still sharp for most lenses and for most scenarios in 1080 mode.

I can see some images from Nikon dslrs where they remove the OLPF and its sharper but moire starts creeping in grills and such.

Also I can learn from the mosaic OLPF I placed in my 5D that its aggressive enough to remove aliasing and moire in almost all situations but some lenses 20mm and wider get problematic.

So looking at a lot of brick wall scenes in the Joyride video, I think the OLPF is useful enough for most but the most densest of patterns.

[Josh Dahlberg]

Originally Posted by Ted Ramasola

D800 has a video optimized OLPF so this should be considered solved.

Are you sure the OLPF is not optimised for hi resolution stills? And surely 4:2:2 is not recorded to H.264 internally, but only via HDMI to an external recorder like the Pix220? Of course I'd love to be wrong on both counts.

The biker video looks fine for low light to me, but it's impossible to properly assess moire/detail with that coarse Vimeo compression. If the picture is detailed and suppresses moire/aliasing it looks like a very promising camera at that price.

[Ted Ramasola]

Originally Posted by Josh Dahlberg

Are you sure the OLPF is not optimised for hi resolution stills?

The Nikon D800 has an OLPF and this must be optimized for video since they removed it in the D800E which is targeted to landscape photographers and those demanding very sharp looking highly detailed stills.

An OLPF, by its very nature, is intended to soften a bit high freq details to avoid aliasing and moire.

They are also releasing software that handles the moire that comes with these images.

[Josh Dahlberg]

Originally Posted by Ted Ramasola

The Nikon D800 has an OLPF and this must be optimized for video since they removed it in the D800E which is targeted to landscape photographers and those demanding very sharp looking highly detailed stills.

An OLPF, by its very nature, is intended to soften a bit high freq details to avoid aliasing and moire.

They are also releasing software that handles the moire that comes with these images.

I'm aware of the alternative version, but I think it's a big leap to infer the OLPF filter must therefore be optimised for video. Portrait photographers, wedding photographers and many others are more likely to go for the version with OLPF - highly doubt it would be optimised for video in a 36mp camera. If it were, I think Nikon would make a point of it in the marketing literature. Again, I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.

[Ted Ramasola]

OLPFs exist even in cameras not meant for video. But in todays marketplace where video is common place in convergence devices, they probably had to deal with compromises. So i think they had to go aggressive on the d800 OLPF since they now give the buyer the option. I really which it would be like an ND filter implementation which you can flip on or off like the ND on the C300.

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

Is amazing that even in DX mode the resolution is 15+ megapixels (if I didn't make any calculating errors). On par with D4. In a way is a D4X with D700 price tag. The only thing that remains to be seen is how the achieved the downscaling of the pixels for the HD image.
Anyway right now is a serious contender for the price/performance crown.

With that MP count they could have done 4k the c300 (or David Heath) way: (3840X2160)x4=33.1MP

[Josh Dahlberg]

From the BHphoto video overview:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/842926-REG/Nikon_D800_D_800_SLR_Digital_Camera.html
"Thanks to Nikon's latest image-processing optimizations, the monumental power of 36.3 megapixels transforms to sharp, exquisitely rendered videos. Expect exceptionally smooth gradation in blue skies, with minimum block noise and beautifully natural movement rendered clearly and sharply. The D800's intelligent image sensor reads out movie images at faster rates than ever, significantly reducing the rolling shutter distortion that can occur during panning shots or when shooting fast-moving lateral subjects like trains. Thanks to EXPEED 3, your movies will take on a distinctive look of their own, even with dimly lit scenes."

On the OLPF:
"Optical Low-Pass Filter Optimized for Sharpness... Finding the right balance between benefits and sacrifices is the key to higher image quality, and that is what the D800's optical low-pass filter delivers. As a result, the astounding 36.3 megapixels unleash their potential through an optimized balance between sharpness and effectively prevented moiré and false color. Furthermore, the multi-layer structure of the D800 low-pass filter utilizes layers of antireflective coating that have been optimized for the camera, contributing to sharper and clearer images"

[Mikael Couderc]

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Plakiotis

The only thing that remains to be seen is how the achieved the downscaling of the pixels for the HD image.
...
With that MP count they could have done 4k the c300 (or David Heath) way: (3840X2160)x4=33.1MP

Well, Dpreview mentions that when in video mode, the D800 only uses about 91% of the sensor width (hence slightly changing the FOV). One has to wonder if that's not to make the number of pixels a more manageable total to allow a better downsampling to HD video.
I mean, just speculating here, but why 91%?

[Derrick Williams]

If Nikon could develop their own HD Codec they would dominate the video DSLR market. They are still limited to 24Mbps.

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by Josh Dahlberg

Are you sure the OLPF is not optimised for hi resolution stills? And surely 4:2:2 is not recorded to H.264 internally, but only via HDMI to an external recorder like the Pix220? Of course I'd love to be wrong on both counts.

The biker video looks fine for low light to me, but it's impossible to properly assess moire/detail with that coarse Vimeo compression. If the picture is detailed and suppresses moire/aliasing it looks like a very promising camera at that price.

Agree. It's 4:2:0 internal, or I'll eat my hat. If it is 4:2:2, it'd be an amazing feat - The AF100 and FS100 - true dedicated video cameras costing $2,000 more - don't even record 4:2:2 internally.

The moire issue is - as usual - way overblown. Moire might be the biggest non-issue in the camera world - "normal" people could care less. Don't shoot a movie about brick buildings or stripped shirts, and you're golden.

A bigger concern is the "video-ish" look of the footage. Some bits looks absolutely cinematic, other bits like pure video (like when he grabs his keys off the night stand). And that's something not happening b/c of video compression.

On paper, this looks like a great camera. But Nikon doesn't exactly have a stellar rep for shooting video... but here's hoping.

[Zach Love]

Nikon is bringing some heat to Canon. Competition is great news for the consumer.

Originally Posted by Derrick Williams

If Nikon could develop their own HD Codec they would dominate the video DSLR market. They are still limited to 24Mbps.

There are plenty of good codecs out there already, it isn't like we're lacking on good codecs. ProRes, AVCHD, DNxHD, AVCIntra, XDCam EX, XF ... (each offer something different). If anything, Nikon should follow JVC's lead (HM series adoption of Sony's XDCam codec) & piggy back on an existing codec instead of trying to invent something new.

It is a lot more hardware & user interface issues that are the pain of HDSLR shooting life right now.

[John Vincent]

New music video using the D800, produced by Nikon (apparently):

EUZEN - You're On [Official] by NIKON - YouTube

Looks pretty darn good to my eyes...

[Tim Polster]

Thanks for posting this John. This looks very nice and I bet they did use an external recorder.

I laughed at the very first comment below the video. Pretty much sums it up. This looks better than a 5DMKII to me. The moto-doctor video did not do much for me from a detail point of view.

Things are heating up for sure!

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Plakiotis

With that MP count they could have done 4k the c300 (or David Heath) way: (3840X2160)x4=33.1MP

Thanks for the credit regarding a way of reading the sensor! :-) Now - can I turn it in to a patent.....? :-)

(I'm afraid I'm only reporting what has been happening for quite a while. It's just that Canon were the first (and so far only?) to publicly say what they were doing - and the first to do it properly, by which I mean with a quad-HD (3840x2160) sensor.)

But joking apart, when I saw the 33/36megapixel specs it was my first thought. It's pretty well understood now what Canon do in the C300, thanks to their openness. Each output pixel is formed from four photosites of a 2x2 block. Easy processing, (hence low power consumption) all photosites used (hence good sensitivity) and must give "true" 1920x1080 resolution.

The C300 uses 2x2 blocks. It's easy enough to see that a very similar process could be easily done with 4x4 blocks to get good 1080 video *IF* the sensor dimensions were (4x1920)x(4x1080). That magic photosite count becomes 7680x4320, or 33,177,600 photosites. A "33 megapixel chip".

BUT - that only becomes true for HD video - 16:9 aspect ratio. A still camera is likely to have a 3:2 chip and use a 16:9 window for video. Therefore I'd expect the full (3:2) dimensions to be more like 7680x5120 - or about 39 megapixel.

But according to the spec on the dpreview site, the max resolution still image from the camera is 7360 x 4912, which works out to be 36,512,320. Since the spec says "Effective pixels 36.3 megapixels" we can be pretty sure that is the actual sensor size. "So near and yet so far" is my reaction to that.......... :-)

As far as the OLPF goes, then if that was optimised for video, the camera would be effectively hopeless as a stills camera - and that is what it is primarily designed for! There is more than one way to skin a cat though, and reading EVERY photosite every frame of a multi megapixel sensor would change the rules significantly as far as moire was concerned. (It's because each output pixel would be formed by 8 green sites, 4 red, 4 blue - hence natural averaging of the too fine detail that would otherwise cause moire.)

The main reason DSLRs suffer from moire is that they (so far) all have to ignore a percentage of the photosites to achieve a fast enough frame rate - hence the averaging is much less than ideal, hence moire. Initially they would skip several lines at a time (really bad), more recently they directly read in 2x2 blocks (as the C300) but (unlike the C300!) skip every other block horizontally and vertically.

The other aspect of that is sensitivity. Missing 3 out of 4 blocks means the sensiitivity will be about 2 stops down on a camera where no skipping happens, after allowances are made for overall sensor size.