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Nikon D800 topic
  • 246 Replies sorted by
  • @hay I would love to see screen grabs.

    I've been looking to have a FF camera for stills also, but if the dynamic range (really 12 stops?) is better than a GH3 and the sharpness is comparable, then I am considering it highly. The BMC is a great tool, but it takes a lot more investment beyond the camera body and workflow which I cannot see reasonable as I don't make a living with video. The one positive I consider heavily is the D800 resale value which the BMC (MFT especially) and GH cameras can't compare to.

  • I have used hacked GH2, GH3 and d800e+ninja2. GH3 best picture, easiest post and best green screen. GH2 and D800e similar green screen and post but better detail on GH2.

  • GH3 better green screen than D800 with ninja 2? Weird because GH3= 4:2:0 and D800 with ninja2= 4:2:2

  • @hay

    will post screen grabs next week if requested

    Yes, please post it!

  • @conscius The keyer likes the gh3 better. Go figure.

  • that broken night stuff does not hold to trailer spectations. And please dont tell about creepy images when there are none.

    And for the record, ive never seen a mom so relaxed seeing its daugher killer, just bad acting.

  • Seriously was the the 9 minute version the short from the award winning director? I thought it was the trailer at first then I found the "trailer" for the trailer I saw.

  • Great looking film for sure, not quite sure about the story, but it looks amazing.

  • Here's a very interesting comment on a forum from someone claiming to be the DP on "Wilfred":

    Brad Lipson on 01.14.13 @ 4:07PM As the director of photography of Wilfred and the person who works closely with Director Randall Einhorn on the show, I was a bit surprised to see all these articles popping up on the internet with Tim Arasheben discussing the look and lighting of the show, ISO and camera performance pertaining to the look. But my email inbox is continually inundated with emails from DP friends and colleagues and many other industry people asking why this is, so I thought I should look at these articles and respond. I’m not sure how it is that our C camera operator and camera gear supplier is the one being interviewed as he is not the one in the hot seat on a daily basis, meeting production deadlines, making creative and technical lighting decisions, going to production on an daily basis to make lighting, grip and camera equipment and man power decisions that will work with the budget to get the job done and basically running the set along with Randall. It is clear from the above article Tim is about promoting his Cinoflex without really giving credit to the person that has to do all of the above on an ongoing basis. But just for the record, Tim has no idea what my shooting ratios are, and the specific decisions that I make with my gaffer Tom Pugh and key grip Kevin Ball each and every day on the set that create the “very dissected and specific lighting” that he refers to in the article above.

  • @last_SHIFT

    Looks like the full short for Broken Night has been posted. This was shot with the D800.

  • Nikon Gamma Controls v0.1 Beta Test:

    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6292/nikon-gamma-controls-v0.1-beta-test#Item_1

    Check it out, this is the breakthrough that takes Nikon DSLR's where no GH2 has gone before!

  • ...and now the real DP of Wilfred turns up to tell his story of shooting an entire TV series using the D800. Nice work, and it's a fun show!

    http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/can-you-shoot-an-entire-tv-series-on-a-dslr-bradford-lipson-paved-the-way-with-wilfred/

  • I've been analyzing the D800's AVCHD CODEC for a work project and discovered a few things that may be of interest:

    Quantization matrices are completely flat (i.e. there are none). You would think that would over-stress the CODEC, but remarkably it doesn't.

    A typical frame has QP values ranging from very low (even 1 in many cases) to quite high (up to 30). This is actually a very good thing because if a macroblock can achieve a target quality using a higher QP value it saves space. This differs from the GH2, for example, in that the GH2 typically uses a narrow range of QP values.

    The D800 uses every type of macroblock encoding imaginable - 4x4, 8x8, and 16x16 in every possible way. This makes things much more efficient (at the price of needing much more processing power).

    The D800 stream contains no buffer management parameters. You don't really need such data for editors, but I'm a little surprised that the internal playback doesn't need them.

    All in all, Nikon's CODEC is very, very impressive; and the quality it achieves at it's bitrate is amazing. How did they do it? Well, probably by throwing a lot of processing power at the task - much of it likely in hardware. This is a different approach than Panasonic has taken (they use software CODECS). Panasonic uses things like custom matrices, etc... to optimize the relatively lower amount of processing power available. The GH2, for example, can't support trying nearly as many QP values and encoding methods which diminishes the efficiency of the CODEC. Nikon's approach appears to be to throw a massive amount of processing power at the task and therefore achieve very efficient use of bandwidth.

    H.265 is a new standard that achieves much better use of bandwidth by doing a lot more processing. It's a trade-off; better bandwidth efficiency vs more work. The same can be said about various H.264 CODECS; some achieve better bandwidth efficiency by doing more work. Just because encoding features are available in H.264 doesn't mean they are being used (the GH1 didn't use most of the available encoding methods and even the GH2 doesn't use a lot of them). The Nikon D800 appears to use everything available. Very impressive...

  • @cbrandin

    Thanks for posting your findings. I absolutely love my D800 (mainly use for stills). I was wondering you think the codec could be improved by firmware? (not that Nikon would ever do anything like that!) A lot of folks say its hard to see the difference between camera CODEC and Ninja2 Output.

  • I don't know how much they can change in firmware. Real time CODECs (like in cameras) tend to be half as efficient as non real time codecs (like on computers). I estimate that Nikon's 28MBPS CODEC is as good as other 50MBPS real time CODECs. It would be cool, though, if they could raise the bitrate parameter in firmware. We'll have to see if they do anything like that. That and if they can pixel-bin instead of line skipping.

    Nikon does have a clean HDMI output, which with Ninja and others offers perfect motion rendering and 4:2:2 color sub-sampling. The CODEC uses QP parameters all the way down to a level of 1. This is interesting because 8-bit output doesn't benefit much from anything below a QP of 5. Does this mean that internally the CODEC is designed for 10-bit data? Nikon doesn't have any other video camera stuff - eventually they would be able to offer 10-bit video data without messing up another of their market segments. Interesting things to think about.

    Historically Nikon has never offered a major functional update with firmware. Imagine the effect on the market they would have if they offered 10-bit per channel video with a simple firmware update!

    As for Ninja vs AVCHD data - there are some very smart guys (e.g. Dexter cinematographer and others) who opted not to record externally because they couldn't see a difference. This is not high motion stuff, so there still might be a big difference in motion rendering. I have a Ninja 2 - in the future I'll do some testing with it.

  • Firmware update released:

    http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/18257/kw/D800

    The new Nikon D800 A:1.01 / B:1.02 firmware update contains:

    • Support for the AF-S NIKKOR 800mm f/5.6E FL ED VR has been added.
    • Subject tracking performance in AF-C (continuous-servo autofocus) autofocus mode with framing using the viewfinder has been improved.
    • Gamut for Adobe RGB images displayed in the camera's monitor has been changed. This enables more vivid display of images.
    • With live view photography in [M] (Manual) exposure mode, exposure preview was always on. This issue has been resolved.
    • In some very rare cases when certain memory cards were used, movie recording would stop, even when the time remaining display indicated remaining recording time. This issue has been resolved.
    • With shooting at an image quality setting of TIFF (RGB) and an image size setting of Small, the right edge of images contained a purple line. This issue has been resolved.
    • In some rare cases, images recorded in JPEG format could not be opened by some software applications. This issue has been resolved.
    • In some very rare cases, colors would change with shooting when white balance was set to a specific color temperature, as with Preset manual or Choose color temp. This issue has been resolved.
  • I'm thinking about selling my aging D700 to get D800. I am totally satisfied with D700's stills, and the only reason I'd get D800 is the video. Right now I carry GH2 for video and D700 for stills, would be nice to have the best of both worlds in one body. I bet some of you handled or even own both GH2 and D800. Would you be so kind to share your COMPARATIVE impressions?

  • Other should fill in more about the D800, but right now I'm having both GH2 and D600. For me this is two different cameras. GH2 more lightweight and flexible, evf and flexible articulated screen. Never happy about GH2 stills when comparing to Nikon. I tend to use my D600 more and more, but it is less run and gun friendly (D800 is a little better than the D600, at least giving you aperture control while in live view). Nice with full frame aesthetics in some scenes.

    I won't sell my GH2, it gives fare more value as a tool than the price. And also remember that moiree is almost neglectible on GH2 compared to at least D600 (D800 might be a little better than D600 in that respect). Also 720p is better on GH2. And thanks to hack, GH2 have no time clip limit which is useful in some projects.

  • @ssh I am fortunate to own both a D800 and GH2, and have used the cameras together on several shoots. Each has their strengths, and while the D800 is a great workhorse, the hacked GH2 just has the edge when you're exposing a well-lit scene. The D800 is better for lower light sensitivity, better DR, or when you need a wider angle (at least until the metabones MFT adaptor becomes available.)

    Here is a sample that I shot with both cameras -- see if you can tell which angle is the GH2, and which the D800.

  • @ahbleza Regarding wider angles, what about the Panasonic 7-14mm?

  • @thepalias That's a nice lens, but I don't own it. I have a mixture of MFT, Nikon and Pentax K-mount lenses -- the widest is a 10-20 Sigma. Since I can use the Nikon lenses on either my GH2 or D800, the wider field of view is obtained when I use a FF sensor.

  • Thanks @evero and @ahbleza that helped a lot. I really don't want to let GH2 go but I'd need to sell MFT lenses to get D800. I have a lingering suspicion I might regret this. @ahbleza, if you had to pick between GH2 and D800 as a video all-arounder, what would it be?

  • D800 in a heartbeat.