Understanding and Optimizing the Nikon D90 D-Movie Mode Image

I got my d90 today..sunny all day(unusual in england at the moment)..spent most of the day driving round the geographicaly displaced camera emporiums looking for a manual lens( aint it funny how theres seldom prices on them)..anyway I got a 28mm 2.8 (not the best)..by the time i got back it was getting dark so my only tests was using 60 watt lightbulbs(which really suck with the stock lens)..that 28mm though,- looking nice...cheers kholi n tribe.

One thing I found which I really dont like is the "waves" I get from artificial light. Noticed it in shop then again at home..got me worried as I had only seen a small amount of this on vids on vimeo...I wonder if you get more of this in 50hz countries...anyway using stock lens doing the "kholi method" I add that you should point at the midtone to set exposure(there always seems to be those waves)...move the camera around the midtone source untill there will be a moment(i know this doesnt sound very scientific)..it seems to cycle through some sort of modes cos the waves dissapear...then lock exposure...no more ugly waves.
ps I have this on my jib with a cambo head and it looks stunning..and Its mounted on rails with grips n folow focus...what a crazy looking beast ive made...Just to add..it all looks smooth with smooth camera movement(obvious really).


I hope this makes sense/helps anyone else.
 
Last edited:
some videos here
http://dcbbs.zol.com.cn/6/657_554228.html

the color chart test (imatest) seems badly done. i doubt there is over 130% deviation in colors.
at imaging-resource i don't remeber seeing more than 120% on any camera. d80 had a ~103% so i really doubt they knew how to take those shots. d300 isn't off either and d90 is supposed to be a very similar or the same sensor.
 
Last edited:
I have a question regarding the theory that ISO is determined largely by chosen aperture:

I just shot 20 secs of ocean footage at the beach today. I was very bright out (about 3pm) and the stills I shot right before were properly exposed at about ISO 200 , F10 , 1/1250 sec. I was in "A" mode so I'm guessing ~F10 was used for the 20 seconds of video footage.

Anyways, I just looked at the footage and it's very very noisy. At least I think it's noise (animated graininess in parts of the image). So based on the 4th post in this thread it sounds like a high ISO was chosen by the camera because I was using F10. But I don't understand how the camera could possibly be deciding to crank the ISO up in this case! After all, my properly exposed stills were ISO 200 at 1/1250 sec!

So maybe it's just really bad compression artifacts and not noise? Can anybody shed some light?
 
Kholi said:
My thought is that the small aperture made the camera thing it needed more light? Hmmm.
Click to expand...

With a small aperture the camera does need more light. But in bright daylight with a fixed aperture, how can the camera possibly bump the ISO up without causing insanely quick "shutter" speeds (1/10,000 sec, 1/20,000, etc)? Remember, my still shot was already using 1/1250 sec at ISO 200. So if the camera where to bump the ISO to 1600, the "shutter speed" would need to be 1/10,000 sec to keep the overall exposure the same.

Maybe the video mode uses the sensor in a very different way that has drastically different exposure values than if you're shooting stills?
 
Last edited:
I'm curious as to the general consensus on the low-light capabilities of this camera.. is shooting indoors without a proper lighting setup a realistic prospect as it seems to be with the Canon 5D MK II or should one expect a large amount of noise on this camera?
 
AF Nikkor 70-210 lens and no LiveView

AF Nikkor 70-210 lens and no LiveView

I've read each post on this thread but may have missed the answer but when I attach my AF lens to the d90 I get no LiveView at all and a flashing f EE message. I've tried adjusting the aperture as outlined in the thread but no go. Is this lens not compatible with the d90 or is it I who may not be compatible.

Thanks for the excellent thread and good advice and Kholi's nice outline.

Matt
 
Last edited:
Just picked up a D90 yesterday. This camera is pretty amazing. The jelly/rolling shutter is a little annoying but easily overlooked once you see the image quality this thing can push out in such low light. Very film-like, very impressive, and in such a small package. Definitely going to tide me over until the next 24p DSLR comes out with full manual control.. or a firmware update for that matter.

natxbrotha: Well I'm waiting on a mini-hdmi cable, but AV out gives liveview on the TV, so I'm assuming so. If the hdmi-output is any good, I would say that we could get about a 90-95% cropped image out of the thing, the overlays are only in the edges and the focus box can be turned off.

mattmurdock123: I've got an AF lens with manual aperture adjustment, however mine has one of those aperture lock switches and needs to be set to the smallest aperture for it to be recognised by the camera and allow me to enter liveview mode. Once in there, however, I can adjust aperture freely.
 
I have a quick question:

Can having a slower SD card make the footage have a lower bitrate?

The reason I ask is because I have seen raw, from-the-camera footage from several different people and some videos showed at lot of compression artifacts and some didn't. I was thinking that maybe they were using different cards.
 
evilfoxhound: What sort of compression artifacts are you talking about? Varying ISO values may result in more grain which could explain these artifacts. Also, quite often the direct downloads on vimeo have been re-encoded so they are not really direct-from-the-camera.
 
Actually, I don't think that what I am seeing is compression artifacts now. Upon closer inspection I think that it's resizing/scaling that i'm seeing. It seems more noticable on videos that have a lot of detail. The begining of this video is a good reference:

http://www.vimeo.com/1794162

As far as I can tell with this video, the AVI download is the original, raw file (I could be wrong). But other videos I have downloaded from other sites were labeled as direct from camera. They also had this horizontal "stair-stepping".

I really wanted to get this camera next week, but every video I have seen has that flaw in the detailed parts (Worst on green things like bushes and grass). Rolling shutter I can overcome, no auto-focus I can overcome, bad sound I can overcome. But this is something which I cannot correct, which is a shame :(
 
Unfortunately the stair-stepping is a reality. In the few clips I've taken it has not been especially obvious, but it is definitely present. I do not plan to use this camera for film in a professional capacity so it's something I can deal with - if you do, however, it might be a dealbreaker. Yet another thing we might hope for Nikon to fix with firmware (though probably less likely than manual control).

On the upside, this camera really does have amazing low-light capabilities. Compared to my HV20 it's miles ahead and the footage is so naturally film-like.. if only they had put a little more effort into getting it right.
 
mattmurdock123: I've got an AF lens with manual aperture adjustment, however mine has one of those aperture lock switches and needs to be set to the smallest aperture for it to be recognised by the camera and allow me to enter liveview mode. Once in there, however, I can adjust aperture freely.[/QUOTE]

Spybreaka

Thanks for your response. My lens goes to 32 and I was fixated on 22. As soon as I went to 32 the LiveView came alive.
Thanks again

Matt
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top