Nikon HD video general discussion thread

[Caleb Reynolds]

Hello everybody. I wanted to post my experiences with shooting with the Nikon D3100.

This is based off of my experience as a DP on a short film we just wrapped 2 nights ago. I don't consider myself an awesome DP. I DO consider myself as a couple steps ahead of beginner, but lower than a pro.

This camera is not marketed to me, and I didn't buy it. The director wanted to use it because he owned this camera.
What I liked:

1. The camera had a great feel and was very light.
2. The camera worked very well on a homemade steadycam rig.
3. The camera got the job done.

What I didn't like:

1. Exposure via changing F stops did not have real time display feed back. The display had to "think" about the change. Same thing happened when plugged in to my monitor.

2. Pushing the film via EV had to be done in a separate menu. So I couldn't see the results in real time. I would change the setting and then go back to check the visual.

3. The "M" mode (manual) is not completely manual. The camera was always trying to change exposure to insure a good image so you never really could tell for sure what your settings produced. I later found out, that in M mode, the camera would change the exposure in order to show you what it suggested. The suggested value is shown in () to the right of my settings. But again, you can't turn that off so you can't tell for sure what your getting for an image. Good news is that the camera produced an image (found on import to fcpx) close to what I wanted.

4. This camera HATES low light. I went for manual white balance and the camera could never get it. So I blew out the scene by removing all scrims & diffusion, set white balance, and then determined it would be better to use AWB! I don't usually trust it, but it worked well for this film.

Other notes: The location was a laundry mat with daylight fluorescents all on and 3 Arri tungsten lights. The Gaffer did not get any CTO or CTB gels, so that made an interesting color combo!

I told the Dir. I will work with the camera again, but if I'm finding its limits with my level of expertise, then please pay me to get you a better camera or buy a good used 5dMkII or rent something.
Other cameras I used in the past: Canon 5d MKII, XL1, XL2, Pana PDX200 (most of the time)

[Steven Davis]

Well, the contraption is only 8 months old and I've used it maybe a dozen times and I have a bent pin. Sent it to Nikon and the estimate is 247.00. I've asked them to explain why it's not covered, but I think I'm swimming upstream. I have a D300 that has plenty of use, over three years and no bent pins. Infact, other than some ancient computers, this is the first pin issue I've ever had.

This is my heads up for my friends. Bah

[Roman Bershadsky]

Just got my new D7100 today. Video looks great but a bit jerky. I tried to force fixed shutter speed in P mode but got confused by camera behavior. I'm new to DSLR video. Can somebody share video settings and modes to use? Manual is very vague.

- 30p Video is not very smooth, much more jerky than 30p video from my HDV prosumer camcorder set in in 1/60 shutter speed. Any solutions?

- What exposure settings to use in manual mode? 1/60 and whatever aperture required? Can ISO be adjusted live or has to be fixed?

- What auto mode to use for best video when auto is needed? When set to S shutter displayed in live view jumps all the time, so not sure what's happening, shouldn't it stay the same? What shutter speed will give me smoothest video and how to force is on automatic mode so the shutter is fixed and ISO is adjusted automatically (aperture is not adjustable during shoot, I know)?

- What picture settings to use for video that will be graded and edited?

- What picture settings to use for family-type video that just needs to be the best out of the box ("cinema" look not required).


Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

[Roman Bershadsky]

Update: I just confirmed a very strange bug! I did some shooting today outdoors in the bright light and in the S (shutter priority mode) with shutter set to 60 as soon as switch to video live view, shutter drops to 30 and stays that way no matter what I do. It does not respond to any dials etc. Obviously camera can't change aperture, so it changes ISO to keep good exposure. But I can's set shutter to 60 in any other mode but full Manual (M). The camera always drops shutter to 30. Why??? Note that if I switch to Photo Live View (not video) then shutter stays 60 and is also fully changeable by command dial.

I can't explain it by anything but a weird bug. I would be OK if it fixes the sutter to one value, but it should at least be the best suitable value (60 for 30p video)! Or user-editable. Instead it drips it to 30 even in bright light. It's not just not optimal setting, but also makes even harder to use wider aperture as there's just too much light at shutter 30. It forces to use manual mode, but with no metering I can't even properly change it during recording, because it's hard to see in a bright light if your exposure is OK and there is no meter to tell you otherwise. Any ideas about how to solve it?

[Steven Davis]

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Service-A...-Advisory.html


Yep, affects all my batteries. Oh Joy.


Please delete this one, sorry for the double post. I blame Mozilla

[Ron McKinney]

I don't think this really matters for which Nikon dSLR that you use. I'm back to shooting video on my D4 after being a wedding videographer for a few years about 10 years ago with a Canon XL1. Focusing was easy, kept it on MF and utilized the AF button.

With these dSLR's, it's a lot tougher. For one, you can hardly see the back of the screen when you're shooting video. But worse, the only way to really track a moving subject is to move the MF with them, using the focus ring, and I'm just not very good at that at all.

What are your tricks? What do I need to learn here? Are you guys using AF for moving subjects?

Ron

[Don Bloom]

Ron,
We've talked about a lot especially lately. When you use a pro type lens you need to do 1 of 2 things.
1) get really really good at follow focus
2) Learn how to Spot focus

To do the first (and you should learn how to anyway) you need to practice practice practice. Shoot the kids, dog (uh, not literally of course) go to the corner and shoot cars going down the street. I used to shoot some NASCAR and always had corner 3. Cars coming at me at up to 190mph. Follow the leader thru the turn and to the next corner (or until the director called another shot). I would practice even when we weren't on the air. Not hours but 10 minutes here and there just to keep my skills up.

To do 2) spot focus (or also called zone focus) is where you place yourself at a certain point and focus on a point say 1/2 way down the aisle. Now keep in mind that DoF is not just iris opening (F/stop) but also how long the lens is and how far to your focus point. Wide lenses are more forgiving. Zoom a lens in and they are less so. Some more than others.
I use mostly spot focusing today using the HM700 with the Fuji17 lens. Of course making sure your point of focus is 110% sharp is critical.
Again, practice practice practice!

[David Stoneburner]

I just saw this yesterday. Seems Nikonhacker has a new firmware hack that allows manual control over iso and shutter while in liveview mode. Here is a YT video with a link to hack. I have not tried it yet, but I'm seriously thinking about it.

Nikon D5100 Manual Control In Live View - YouTube

[David Stoneburner]

I loaded on the firmware the other day and so far, so good. Read the directions carefully, and it only works with the 1.1 firmware, not the new 1.2 official. There are many choices to change like extend or no recording limit. (It seemed to add 4 more minutes of recording time but I still need to look at it), NEF no compression, less compressed JPGs, support for third party batteries and the manual ISO control. I just activated the extended recording, battery and iso control. I didn't bother with the others. Here is what I found with a quick test. In liveview, you can manually control the iso and shutter, but nothing seems to happen when adjusting the f-stop. I'm not sure if you have to set that before going into liveview or not. So I'm still testing but having some manual control is cool so far.

[Kyle Root]

One of the specs is supposedly 120 fps at 1280x720.

Depending on the price of the camera and something like Red Giant's Instant HD, may be a cheap (relatively) slow motion solution if it works.

400 fps and 1,200 fps at lower resolutions.

This is the Nikon 1 V3 camera | Nikon Rumors

.... Now.... if they could just do something like this in a new D400/7200/9000 - I'd buy that!

[Caleb Reynolds]

Anyone use or have used this DSLR for shoots? Thoughts? My Wife just got one for some stills and it looks good with some quick test vids I did. But just seeing what anyone else's thoughts would be. I know its not as nice as the D4's and higher end Canon's, but I couldn't convince her to get a BMD pocket. :(

[David Stoneburner]

I have a D5100, which is similar. Coming from more of the video background, I've found that you can take really nice video with it but it takes a lot more work. Controlling your environment is very helpful, and testing and adjusting your settings. I bought it because I wanted to be able to take stills and/or video at some of the events that I go to. I was tired to trying to decide which camera to take and didn't want to carry 2. Look on line and you can find some tutorials that help out with lens choice, ND filters etc.

[Kyle Root]

Last Thursday, I got my used FT1 (Adorama $149) and began playing around with it on my V1.

Saturday, a friend of mine was filming a wedding up in near Nashville and I asked him if I could bring my new set up and test it out at his wedding shoot. He said sure, so I loaded up the car with my V1, FT1, F2.8 trinity, Manfrotto 561 monopod, and Konova K3 slider.

It was a sunny afternoon with little clouds and it was an outdoors wedding.

Overall I'd say the V1 worked quite well for the video. It took me a while to get use to everything, but shooting in manual mode allowed for great control. Some things I noted

(1) Of course, the hardest part was viewing the LCD screen in the super bright sunlight. Needed some sort of hood or something. I did resort to using the viewfinder as the day went on.

(2) Shooting on the monopod, while good for tight quarters indoors, still yielded noticeable "wobble" for lack of a better term. Would have been better to be on a tripod, even for indoor shots.

(3) I like that while recording, I can push the focus button and it requires focus. For instance, when the bride was coming down the aisle, she was in focus for say 5 or 6 feet, and then I'd have to refocus as she got closer.

This will now be my poor man's solution to getting shallow DOF shots, as the quality is very good in my opinion.

[Kyle Root]

Last night, Nikon unveiled their new D810 which upgrades the camera to 1080 60p and uncompressed output to external recorders. There is also a newe filmmakers kit option:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1062611-REG/nikon_13456_d_810_dig_cam_w_35mm_50mm_85mm.html

Story:
Nikon D810 now available for pre-order | Nikon Rumors

I may be upgrading my D90. As I've noted elsewhere, I've been using my Nikon V1 extensively for video the past few months at weddings and it does a fantastic job. I can only imagine that something like a D810 would be even better... especially ergonomically. Yes, I do have regular ENG type cameras I use at weddings, and external audio recorders etc, but for all my creative shallow DOF type shots, these kinds of cameras are the way to go!

[Jonathan Levin]

I was wondering about the video output. Even with the 800/800e video is un-compressed going into an external recorder. So nothing new there.

Is there any information about a setting for shooting non-h.264 right to CF card? That would be really cool.

Jonathan