D90 or die?

Chance White

Chance White

Well-known member
I've used the D90 for a few gigs now with final destinations on the web.

Do you feel that the 720p is acceptable for HD distribution (web to Blu Ray)? I think it's fairly established that it can provide phenomenal SD.

Basically I have fallen in love with the DOF, low light performance, colors and the dynamic range. The footage this camera captures feels alive. I just don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself... So try to convince me not to use it for a feature or other serious narrative work.

Would you shoot HV20+Adapter over the D90?
 
SD ok, I'm going to buy one, but i don't have to go for HD yet. The stair-stepping ist bad for clean nice shots. It seems to go away after resizing to SD resolutions...

I'd use the D90 for exactly those shots, which are impossible with other cameras. I wouldn't buy a 35mm converter now, it's to late. better wait what next year has in store for us.
 
Shots which are impossible with other cameras:

-Lowlight conditions
-Guerilla style situations in large crowds, etc where the size becomes a liberating factor
-Uh, 'inside the fridge' type shots

Anyone care to add to the list?
 
Should I be exporting from Quicktime with:
SD 768x576 ???
or NTSC 4:3 letterbox if required ???
or NTSC 16:9 letterbox if required ???

Thanks very much in advance,

- Nicholas
 
NTSC 4:3 letterboxed or NTSC 16:9 at 24p of course (23.976)

Also, my FCP workflow has consisted of running the clips through Compressor, creating DVCPRO HD 23.976 fps footage and then using that sequence preset in FCP.

Inside a jacket! Nice... ha ha...

Car interiors could be interesting. Upon first reading this I thought of 'mounting' it to the dashboard in the corner, but it would be pretty difficult to control the camera from that position...

Regardless, seems fun and valuable to consider the possibilities.
 
I'm also curious to know if anyone has tried any color keying or other compositing operations? Or more intensive secondary color correction? With the dynamic range it seems like color control would be higher, though I don't know if it would be comparable to 4:2:2 or what...

Also would like to to know if/or to what degree the JPEG compression and strange edging artifacts would hinder the process.
 
My 720p isn't that good looking with it, but I'm getting much better footage than my HV20 plus static adapter. Really I would prefer my D90 to my HV20 and any adapter for low DOF shots.

I've played with color some and my understanding from a couple of articles is that mjpeg at less than 100% quality is 4:2:2 ; if it somehow did mjpeg at 100% quality (very unlikely to ever happen, but lets say there was a hack and it handled the bitrate) then it would be 4:4:4. Color is definitely better than my HV20 and responds better to correction (not that I'm an expert on color correction or grading)

I think if your final output is 720p you just need to accept that you'll be on the soft side for image quality, and it would be a good idea to play with anti-aliasing filters too. I haven't tried it, but I suspect that a good film grain effect might help hide the softness and jaggies some.
 
I wouldn't plan on any heavy keying or color corrections in post processing. The compression ist just that good, that you can't really tell when looking at original footage at 100%. But zooming in or doing any compositing schould bring those JPG artefacts forward...

For color correction there is the possibility of aplying custom curves, which you can create with the camera control software. After feeding the camera with your own color correction programs, you can chose what the camera does with the image before it gets messed up by the compression.
 
wow, how do we feed the camera with a color correction program before the camera mess up the image with compression?!! that's important
 
Wow so pre-color correction is the best way to manipulate the image? Not even primary color corrections, levels, etc should be attempted?

This seems crazy to me, not really touching the image in post, but I am so impressed with the way the footage looks, perhaps it will work.
 
I'd just use the preset "neutral" in your camera presets. It's really tough to tell exactly what your picture will look like using custom curves. I wish there was a d/led section for all different kinds of curves to use.
 
Currently, there are no examples of the active use of custom curves. I'd like to hope, that it really works like that, but I wouldn't expect it. I don't even know if I care that much about it, since I'm not that much into clean and professional films. Rightnow I'm just a student who wants to learn and make some nice little films, doens't matter if it's trash. I'll just add grain and other filters to make it look even worse, but stylish...
 
I have. I'll post the differences sometime in the next few days. I took down the saturation, lifted the contrast and lowered the sharpness. I won't shoot night scenes with it, but in the daylight or office setting it looked good.
 
I'm guessing you'd have to use different curves for low light situations. It'll be a pain in the ass to take samples, adjust the curves on the laptop and then feeding the camera with the perfect curve for the current situation, but at least it works...I hope.
 
ohh definitely. but this is what i'd suggest. is shooting a still the night/day before to get your lighting or whatever and then upload that image into NX and adjust your curves from there. get the desired look and upload to your camera. but actually, i'd only use the neutral/vivid or standard preset any other time. there's no real point to adjusting the curves before each and every shot.
 
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