D610 vs D800 for video?

Right now i own a d800e with some vintage glass + a 50mm 1.8G, 105mm 2.8G VR and Tamron 24-70 2.8 VR. If I were to start all over again I would probably get the D5300 and, some cheap vintage glass + some really wide modern lens. The rest of the money would go into sound, light and rig that were not really camera specific. My reason for this is that in 2 years you will probably be able to get a FF nikon camera body with good codec and 1080p 60/120fps. Camera bodies seems to get dated fast and jumping on the d800e was a little bit to pricey to justify a short life span, even though it will be a great stills-camera for many years of course. The FF advantages for me are probably how it renders the picture as a big deep space in a nice way. I also like to go out with a vintage 50mm 1.4 and shoot documentary style in the middle of the night at ISO 3200 :)
 
Samuel H said:
D800 has minimal aliasing/moire (it has some, but not much). D600 is on of the worst cameras out there in terms of aliasing/moire, and AFAIK the D610 hasn't changed that. I would not consider it an option if I was interested mainly in shooting video.

If you want full frame video, you can either go flagship (5D3/D800/A7r), or NEX APS-C with speedbooster. No other option makes sense to me right now.
Click to expand...

This 'difference' strongly suggests that there is some form of DSP processing in the D800 to get 'better anti-moire' filtering than in the D600, and as such could be done in post on D600 footage.

Both the D600 and D800 have a Optical Low Pass filter, the D800E does not, and of course that camera comes with a warning from Nikon about the potential for such artifacts.

However, the OLPF is designed for 'stills' which are on the order of 4K (horizontal), and not for a subsampled 1920 for 'video'.

There is no free lunch... in order to reduce aliasing artifacts, 'mushing' aka 'low pass filter', must be performed.

That would mean for 'in camera', some form of soft focus filter may be in order for the D600.
 
You can have this now. Buy an Alexa. Or purchase a Black Magic Cinema Camera as it's VERY close to the dynamic range you can get from the D7100 when shot in RAW. I am going to do some tests soon with my BMCC against my D600 to see how they both do in similar challenging conditions.

baronmax said:
I wonder how long it will be before we're getting the same DR in video as we can get in photography? I would kill for a video camera that had the same DR as my D7100 when taking stills. I don't seem to get anywhere close to that in video. Perhaps that's because of the codec, as the raw videos I've seen seem to have a lot more colors and definition. I've tried making my video more and more flat, but I'm still nowhere near stills quality range.
Click to expand...
 
PerroneFord said:
You can have this now. Buy an Alexa. Or purchase a Black Magic Cinema Camera as it's VERY close to the dynamic range you can get from the D7100 when shot in RAW. I am going to do some tests soon with my BMCC against my D600 to see how they both do in similar challenging conditions.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the Alexa is only $35,000, I guess I could sell my car and buy one. :D

There's someone working on RAW video for the D7100 now. Not sure if that will ever materialize, but if it does, I will be jumping on that bandwagon. Unless I happen to win the lottery (the lottery that I don't play), it's unlikely I'll ever get my hands on anything better than a mid-range DSLR. If I did professional work, I might be able to justify something more expensive, but the stuff I do is mainly personal or for family/friends and I don't get paid much, if anything.

I would LOVE to have a BMCC or even the BMPCC. Maybe one of these days I'll buy one or the other, but the Alexa is out of my range...WAY out of my range. It would be nice to have one though, just to piddle around with. So if you ever win the lottery, I'd be forever grateful if you sent me one...or a Red Epic, I'm not picky. ;)
 
LOL!

It's funny, I sat with money in hand waiting to buy a Scarlet and build it out, but the ISO performance didn't meet my needs. I don't shoot enough big jobs to warrant an Epic. I'd love to have an Alexa, and the temptation keeps hitting me, but I'll pass on that for now.

The thing about a BMCC or BMPCC is that if you work it right, you can pay off the camera in a job or three. They aren't reeally all that expensive. Shoot a graduation for a few hundred bucks, shoot a prom. Grab some video at a wedding, and you're done.



baronmax said:
Yeah, the Alexa is only $35,000, I guess I could sell my car and buy one. :D

There's someone working on RAW video for the D7100 now. Not sure if that will ever materialize, but if it does, I will be jumping on that bandwagon. Unless I happen to win the lottery (the lottery that I don't play), it's unlikely I'll ever get my hands on anything better than a mid-range DSLR. If I did professional work, I might be able to justify something more expensive, but the stuff I do is mainly personal or for family/friends and I don't get paid much, if anything.

I would LOVE to have a BMCC or even the BMPCC. Maybe one of these days I'll buy one or the other, but the Alexa is out of my range...WAY out of my range. It would be nice to have one though, just to piddle around with. So if you ever win the lottery, I'd be forever grateful if you sent me one...or a Red Epic, I'm not picky. ;)
Click to expand...
 
PerroneFord said:
LOL!

It's funny, I sat with money in hand waiting to buy a Scarlet and build it out, but the ISO performance didn't meet my needs. I don't shoot enough big jobs to warrant an Epic. I'd love to have an Alexa, and the temptation keeps hitting me, but I'll pass on that for now.

The thing about a BMCC or BMPCC is that if you work it right, you can pay off the camera in a job or three. They aren't reeally all that expensive. Shoot a graduation for a few hundred bucks, shoot a prom. Grab some video at a wedding, and you're done.
Click to expand...

I think Nikon could (and should) build a camera specifically designed for video and be relatively cheap, which would take on the bmpcc. Use the sensor from the D7100, allow it to shoot raw and pro-res 4:2:2 to the card, give it the ability to change aperture in live view, give it a flat picture profile like the bmpcc, ofc clean HDMI out, use the same mount as is on the new DF (to allow older glass metering) and replace the D300s with this camera. Instead of a stills camera which shoots video, make the focus of this line to be video FIRST and put in all the bells and whistles that they can for $1499.99. APS-C is the sweet spot currently, as far as price/performance, so it makes sense to start there, rather than to make a FX camera that has to compete with Canon's Cinema Line (which is too expensive, imo). The bmpcc is a quirky little camera, people would gladly jump ship if something better came along and the D7100's sensor is amazing for video, it's just that the camera's limited software is holding it back. Nikon's cameras have the power to shoot RAW video and the speed of the SD card as well, but the software isn't there, they could fix that easily, I believe. That would kick down the door to the video world and allow Nikon to SURVIVE the next 5 years. Canon is stomping their butt in the video world, that needs to change if they intend to remain in business.
 
Based on what I've seen, I don't think SD cards offer the speed to write raw data from an APS-C sensor. I haven't seen anyone do this successfully yet. Also there is that issue of reading the sensor fast enough to avoid horrible rolling shutter. Especially in a smaller body camera. THE BM cameras are nice because the entire body acts as a heat sink. You can't do that with the plastic body cameras.

Beyond this, I don't think Nikon has a vested interest in video, and I don't think the typical Nikon buyer does either. Canon has screwed this up for 5 years. Even with Hollywood knocking on their doors with TONS of money, they still don't have a DSLR that shoots RAW from the factory. Frankly, I think Nikon has a number of holes in their product lines to address before they look at moving to filmmaking.
 
* There are some very fast SD cards, but the bottleneck could be in the controller, as is the case with the Canon SD-card cameras. If the controller can handle the bitrate, a 128GB SD card rated at 600x costs around the same as a similar CF card, and it would probably allow 1920x800 RAW recording (around 30 minutes of footage in 128GB). Plus, the D7100 has two slots, interleaving frames would give you 1080p even with slower cards. It's all trying to avoid silly obstacles, but in principle it could be done. It's obviously a lot easier if you design a movie camera from the start, and put a SATA SSD port in it. As they should do.

* The fact that some cameras have more aliasing/moire than others is usually not related to image processing, it's a result of the sensor specs: if the sensor can't read out the pixels fast enough for video, it skips rows, and this results in aliasing/moire. The sensor in the D800 is designed for faster readout than the sensor in the D600. Same with the 5D3 and the 6D.

* Taking both of the above into account, plus the fact that I do want a FF sensor, the camera I want to see hacked with RAW video is the D800.
 
Samuel H said:
I don't have a problem closing them down to f/5.6 or narrower, but I want my 24mm to be wide, and my 50mm to be normal.
Click to expand...

There is one big drawback to using a FF camera vs a m4/3 camera, you have to use 4 times the amount of light to achieve the same DOF in your shots.

So lighting a set with a 2K lighting package and shooting at f/2.8, becomes lighting with an 8K lighting package and shooting at f/5.6.

Shooting at 4 times the ISO rating can compensate for this, but sometimes you really want to shoot at the native speed of the camera's sensor to achieve the best quality the camera can produce.
 
With the same pixel technology, you can push the ISO two stops higher with FF than with MFT and noise stays the same.
Of course, pixel technology is never the same when you're comparing actual cameras. But this used to be a good rule back in the 5D2-vs-7D days (you had to close down aperture 1 stop on the 5D2 to keep the same DoF, but you could also increase ISO one stop and noise was still fine).
Detailed tech discussion: http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/does.pixel.size.matter/

In any case, for me the absolute best is an APS-C sensor in a mirrorless body, so my lenses can work as FF with a SpeedBooster, which also gives me that extra stop of light. And it is much easier to design a good APS-C sensor than a FF sensor.
But since I also want to keep all the DR from the sensor, and right now that means RAW, it can't have a puny SD slot, so it's dead ends all around.

Which leads me to:

@PerroneFord: yes, I know...
 
Last edited:
So, I said there are some very fast SD cards out there... and they're obviously getting faster by the day: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?310823-Toshiba-EXCERIA-Pro-SD-Memory-Cards-do-260-MB-s

It would also be nice to see a Sony NEX hacked to shoot RAW, or maybe even the A7r. A small fullframe camera that can shoot RAW video with 14 stops of DR for just $2300? Yes, I think I would be happy with that...
Unfortunately this seems to be basically dead (or at least painfully slow) (actually so slow that I think we're more likely to have a Canon DSLR with Sony-like DR before we get a Sony DSLR with Canon-like RAW video mod; and that's saying something; I would love to be wrong, my very cheap NEX-5N is shoots very impressive RAW stills).
 
Last edited:
Samuel H said:
* The fact that some cameras have more aliasing/moire than others is usually not related to image processing, it's a result of the sensor specs: if the sensor can't read out the pixels fast enough for video, it skips rows, and this results in aliasing/moire. The sensor in the D800 is designed for faster readout than the sensor in the D600. Same with the 5D3 and the 6D.
Click to expand...

Pixel, row, or column 'skipping' is a form of DSP. However, where have you gotten information that the D800 does not skip lines in its processing from its large sensor to the 1920x1080 HD result?
 
The D800 definitely does line-skipping, what I said is that the D800 skips less lines than the D600. I would guess that the D800 reads half the lines, the D600 only a third.

Also, on the sensors I've studied in detail, the line-skip happens directly in the sensor: it's a feature that the sensor manufacturer implements to help the camera developer get a faster readout that can sustain video frame rates without awful rolling shutter issues. Then, if there's column-skipping too, that usually happens in the DSP stage. So yes, line-skipping can happen in the DSP stage, but my bet (and I'm quite confident about it) is that on the D800 it happens at the sensor readout step: when you're shooting video, the sensor never sends out information for most of its pixels.
 
Last edited:
Samuel H said:
The D800 definitely does line-skipping, what I said is that the D800 skips less lines than the D600. I would guess that the D800 reads half the lines, the D600 only a third.

Also, on the sensors I've studied in detail, the line-skip happens directly in the sensor: it's a feature that the sensor manufacturer implements to help the camera developer get a faster readout that can sustain video frame rates without awful rolling shutter issues. Then, if there's column-skipping too, that usually happens in the DSP stage. So yes, line-skipping can happen in the DSP stage, but my bet (and I'm quite confident about it) is that on the D800 it happens at the sensor readout step: when you're shooting video, the sensor never sends out information for most of its pixels.
Click to expand...

Here's someone who has put up a 'zone plate chart', and tested the D800.

http://falklumo.blogspot.com/2012/04/lumolabs-nikon-d800-video-function.html

I've downloaded and printed out the chart, and my D600 has a very similar response, which may or may not be related to actual differences in the camera, vs. my process of printing out the chart, and setup for the test with the camera.

In any case, the photographer who setup the chart and test, Falk Lumo, seems to come to the conclusion that the D800 skips 3 vertical lines, while processing the full 'horizontal' line worth of pixels.

I'm going to redo my tests with the D600 to verify what it produced.
 
Well, I would definitely trust Falk Lumo for this kind of stuff.

But looking at frames from its RAW video, I also think the 5D3 is skipping 2 out of every 3 lines but reading all the columns (conclusion reached by looking at noise structure: I didn't shoot a zone chart, which makes these things easier), and that ends up showing very little aliasing/moire (even less than the D800).
Maybe that is because they skip lines in a different way: the graphs there show one line read, two not read, one read, two not read, etc, but when the CMV12000 does line-skipping it can do things like two lines read, four not read, two lines read, four not read, etc. Which would lead to worse B/W aliasing artifacts but much less color moire.

In any case, one thing is for sure: the D600 is skipping a lot more than the D800! Taking this new info into account, I would say it must be skipping columns too. Or maybe it's just skipping two thirds of the rows, and the much-increased moire is the result of its lower resolution.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top