@maxotics no worries :) I am glad that you feel that way... Same here...

Yeah, all of the gear adds up to be quite a bit. I am always telling my Boss ( Wife ) ok this is the last thing that I need to buy, then in about one week I realize that I need something else it seems like it is never ending.

In regard to the basic stuff the Passport Color Checker is really awesome. It comes with software that basically installs a plugin for Lightroom for each camera that you have. So once you learn how to set everything up it is awesome. It also doubles as a white balance card. If I am not mistaken it comes with a video tutorial that walks you through the whole process, if not there are a some really good tutorials on youtube to properly use this tool.

The light meter is kinda pricey. I have the cine version they generally cost more then the regular version but to me it is worth it for all of the extra features. Anyway glad I could be of help to you. The other thing to consider is calibrating your monitor. I have the X-Rite ColorMunki Display. I know all this stuff adds up but if you want your still imaging and videos to look decent this is the bare minimum. Sorry I forgot to add it in the post above. I have 3 monitors and it pretty much calibrates all of the monitors so that they all have the same color rendition.

The only thing that is kinda of a bummer to me, is that you can calibrate your monitor so that the colors are true. But when you deliver the final product to the client, if they don't have their monitors calibrated then it wont look the same. I always take my 15" Retina MacBook Pro and show the images/videos/websites to them on my laptop so they know what it supposed to look like.

I am not saying that these are the best tools, but these are the basics for photography and video.

@Vitaliy @All sorry for going off topic.

Best Regards

Any chance of a hack to add/change functionality in the near future for de D600?

I don't see anything really new. Except for shallow depth of field, I'd shoot video on my GF3 before the D600. 24p is not going to change that. I really wouldn't buy this camera for video. However, as a photography camera (what Nikon specializes in) this camera does for stills what Panasonic does for video--optimizes sharpness and allows you to crop smaller (while maintaining decent res) with this camera than the comparable Canon (due to the sensor). I was going to sell my D600, but if this drives the price down too far I'll keep it for stills. The oil thing is blown out of proportion.

If photography is your passion, this camera would not disappoint you. As for video, sorry, Nikon has no real economic incentive to go down that route. I've been immersed in DSLR video for a couple of months now and I'm pretty sure the number of people pursuing it, in a real way, numbers in the thousands. I see the same names, on all the boards. The video enthusiast market, for DSLRs, I calculate to be less than 0.05% (and that's optimistic).

When I first doing this I thought Nikon short-sighted for not allowing their cameras to be hacked. Now I see the economic/user-risk reality. Many people buy Nikons because they are built like, work like, tanks. It isn't worth losing millions of customers, if a problem arises, for a few who might shoot RAW-type video.

All that said, they have a mic input and if you want to get some quick video, you have an option.

I had decided that if I was going to sell my D600, I'd do it after an event I wanted to take photos for. I brought 2 Canon EOS-Ms, with different lenses, Canon flash, and the D600 with an old Nikkor 50mm 1.4 About ten minutes after I got there they turned down the lights. The Canons were great for standard flash shots.

Then it was the D600, "Let me show you what I can do." I set my aperture to 2.8 and began shooting.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxotics/10254718153/

All the outside and inside non-flash shots were taken with that setup.

I've read many reviews where photographers rave about the low-light performance of this camera. I haven't compared it with a Canon full-frame, but I know an APS-C sized sensor camera would not come close.

Review, conclusion, is the same as with D600, as it is same camera.

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/nikon-d610-dslr-review-23260

Nikon D610 adds just 3 new features to the one-year-old D600 camera, none of which are going to compel D600 owners to rush out and upgrade. Unofficially, we suspect that the D610 has been rushed out to fix the "oil on the sensor" issue that plagued its predecessor, as the D610 now has a different shutter release mechanism.

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/nikon_d610_review/

@maxotics ... please post whether they replace the shutter assembly or not. I did see one camera store's blog where they noted that on receipt of a few factory-refurbed D600's, and checking ... they all had the same new-style shutter assembly as on the D610's they had in stock.

It's amazing how badly they've handled the public relations of this problem. Still, the camera's themselves are quite useful especially for the price. No, it's not my D3 in build, back-panel LCD, all sorts of things. However ... total resolution, movie capability, 'native' dynamic range ... it's got things my D3 doesn't, that the missus uses more in her studio/environmental portrait work than the ruggedness and WEIGHT of the D3 she's been shooting with. "For a few dollars less ... " to paraphrase an old movie title.

Neil

FYI, after 2 weeks I got my D600 back from Nikon. They replaced the entire shutter mechanism. Like a new camera now (my guess is functionally equivalent to D610). So have no beef with Nikon! :) I've always been a Canon guy, and for the most part, doubt I'd see the difference between this camera and any Canon full-frame. There are two reasons I still haven't sold this camera.

1. Able to use old Nikkor glass, like a 1.4 50mm I have.
2. It is built like a tank (compared to similarly priced Canons.
3. I don't care about the extra resolution except that it may improve color because you have more red and blue pixels to pull data from when down-scaling.

Interesting to see the way the focus sorta tracked ... hunted just a bit a couple times, but on the walk back mostly sorta tracked, but needs to be better.

Shooting a GH3 myself, and working with the wife and friend with their D600's ... dang, those big gorgeous Nikon lenses are noisy when they focus. My 17mm Oly and 35-100 Panny are absolutely quiet. Wish the Nikon's were!

I love my d600 for stills. For video, once I started using Magic Lantern RAW with some Canon cameras I couldn't go back. I now have a BMPCC (Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera). In stills, you have say 12 stops of dynamic range. With the d600 (and all the other cameras that shoot video in H.264), you need to make sure that what you want exposed correctly is within a couple of stops. That's too frustrating for me. The shallow DOF is nice, compared to a camcorder.

To me, you'd be crazy not to shoot video in RAW, or close to it. Each video frame from my d600, for example, is probably about 100k. From my BMPCC I'm getting 2 megabyte DNGs. As a photographer, I'm sure you know what that ultimately means.

http://www.digitalcamerareview.com/default.asp?newsID=5478&review=nikon+D610+DSLR+does+it+have+dust+problems+time+lapse+video

@maxotics

Oh yea. My brain would be doing a very fast computation of cards-needed/gigs-of-driveS needed/time uploading/rendering & etc. and ... COSTS ... while I was shooting!

Now if I was getting paid for a cine-shoot on a bigger budget, NOT as the person worried about profitability so much ... then YES! Cine-RAW all the way! :-)

Neil