Nikon HD video general discussion thread

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

For stills/video combined work, you would be better off sticking to the non-"G" lenses. All of the earlier AF & MF Nikkors have wide manual rings and aperture controls on the barrel, and all will work on Nikon D800

I would advise you to buy a mint secondhand Nikkor MF 35mm f/1.4 Ais. Very sharp and smooth manual focus ring for video - a great lens!
The early Nikkor AF 35mm f/2 is also a good lens, although the manual ring was not very wide, and the MF version was better in that regard.

The Nikon Nikkor AF 28mm f/1.4D is also a superb lens.

In the Nikkor zooms that cover the 35mm range, the Nikkor AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8D IF and older AF 20-35mm f/2.8D IF lenses are very good and sharp optics - solidly made and nice handling.

[Mark Kenfield]

Well having just picked up a PIX240 video recorder today, I got home and grumbled that I didn't have anything to shoot on it with. But then I remembered that my old faithful D300 has an HDMI output, so I plugged it in and started playing around.

The camera exports out a bunch of settings around the border of the footage, but there's a clean 1430 x 948 pixels in the centre which can be fairly easily cropped out and with the PIX240 able to record high quality audio to go along with the footage (albeit out of sync until I can figure out the audio delay to input). I now (inadvertently) have my first large-sensor HD cam!

http://i.imgur.com/VrNtW.jpg

And here's a sample (downressed to 1000px for web):

http://i.imgur.com/Jcxrw.jpg

Kinda cool I reckon!

[Jack Zhang]

I did the same thing with a D300 I had lying around and my nanoFlash. The only downside is that the frame rate is very low in HD mode. 5 or so frames per second. You also can't enable PsF or else there will be interlacing every now and then.

[Andrew Clark]

Hello -

If you setup the D800 to record to an external recorder via the HDMI port, is it able to record at 1080/60p?

Or will it only record what the camera's video recording settings are (1080--30p/24p....etc...)?

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

It does not record 60p, only 1080p30.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Governor’s Introduction | 2012 Heroes in Health Care Gala on Vimeo

Basically the Nikon D600 is taking a video of Governor Deval Patrick.

[Gerd Kogler]

Hi all,

I have recently acquired a Nikon D800E, it works fine, but the ML-L3 Remote Controller does not work, battery is fine. Has anyone out there the same combination and does it work for you?

Thank You, cheers

Gerd

[Gerd Kogler]

Got the answer - I have the wrong info, it does not work with D800E.

[Marcus Martell]

Lenses used?

[Graeme Hay]

I've been using a GH2 (hacked 88MPS) for over a year, and I'm pretty happy with the results in ideal conditions. However I'm finding the lowlight performance to be poor and as I was a Nikon shooter before I have a lot of 'Pro' Nikkor Glass (mainly FF glass) that when used with the GH2 using a adapter is troubling (that 2x crop factor makes almost everything telephoto).

So I've been seriously thinking about the D600/D800. For the money the D600 seems the better choice (unless someone can point out a serious reason why the D800 justifies a 50% more money on the video side of life, for photography I can understand it but I do less of that these days), D4 is outside my budget/willingness.

But I'm also concerned that I will see a drop in image quality, so that is of concern.

Is this a good idea or am I really just shooting myself in the foot?

[Stephen Brenner]

There is the issue of the D600 not having the adjustable aperture and the 100% hdmi out that the D800 has. Both problems have been mentioned as possible firmware fixes, but who knows. I moved from the D7000 to the D600 and am pretty happy with the camera for video. You can use manual lenses for adjusting the aperture directly, or do a two step process with g lenses by getting out of liveview, changing the aperture and getting back into liveview. I don't have a D800, so I can't tell you how the video IQ compares between the cameras. I can tell you that the still image IQ is very nice and hardly worth the upgrade to the D800.

[Ron McKinney]

When I first plugged in my Sennheiser shotgun mic to my D4, I was still in AF mode and later I could hear the AF motor turning. I'm not with my D4 manual right now so can't check it, but can anyone tell me if you can shut off the D4 mic so you're only getting audio from the Sennheiser?

I'd appreciate any feedback.

Ron

[Jeff Zimmerman]

Ran across this article at Eoshd.com. I'll be giving the Nikon V1 a little more attention this weekend.

Nikon V1 – shooting 4K 60fps raw for $200 | EOSHD.com

[Duane Adam]

That is very cool. I started doing 4k a few weeks ago using the JVC 4k camera and D800 burst. Once you see how detailed these files look, even on a 1080p display, it's hard to go back to HD.

I'll be adding one of these to my collection.

[Oliver Neubert]

The input should automatically switch to the external mic, however if you keep it too close to the camera / lens, you will hear its noise. If you have some sort of mount which is attached to the camera, noise will likely be transmitted through the body.