Nikon 850 w/ 4K!

puredrifting said:
I am surprised people are still even buying DSLRs for pro video use. My 80D from a year ago has came in handy here and there on a gimbal or as an alternative angle but if I were buying something small and relatively cheap as a b-cam today, it would be the Fujinon XT-2. Even when I stop using the 80D for video, it is a great stills camera, I have done a few portrait sessions with it, it can capture beautiful images.
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I don't know which way to come at this.

Stills
I do pro stills and have used Nikon for years - I can't - and maybe I'm a dinasour - think that a mirrorless would replace a Nikon DSLR
I think - from some experience that the on mirrorless the AF is super slow - even the capture button fires late - the menues horrific and the bodies so skinny as to give you hand cramp and not viewing ground glass feels non organic.
It would be nice however on a stills job to be able to do some video.

Motion
Being that mirrorless are horrid to hold have crap menues it would be nice to use a Nikon for small cam video work.

I'm hitting "mirrorless" as a class - but the semi capables - a7s and Gh4 - are just horrifically designed compared to a canon or Nikon dslr.

The 5d2 Evf and 24-105 was actually really ergonomic for simple video

--
Finally - I always though Nikon could (if they put their mind to it) just pump out a NEF shooting beast of a video camera that could eat the Alexas and red for dinner
 
The debate isn't whether a $3,500 DSLR will be as good as a $7,000-$10,000 "video only" camera but whether it includes all the latest technology that is present on models within its price range. In that regard, D850 neither has the Log, the oversampling (although the DX center crop might look more than acceptable, something that was the case with A7RII), the bit depth or the possible HDMI or SDI connectivity. By comparison, there are $1,000 cameras with Log, $2,000 cameras with the 10-bit HDMI connections, etc.

And, for a company that has been struggling financially, holding up on the feature set isn't very prudent. Frankly, one might have expected Nikon to act out of desperation and make D850 a superior performer in video as well. Alas, It's basically an A99II clone in F-mount.
 
Of course they are struggling financially- because they have cloth in thier ears.

1985-2008 Nikon was a legit choice of working pros f3 f4 d3 et al.

And they had a few cheaper models for wannabe and students moving into the system (f301 et al.)

These were tool to deliver prints!

But prints are dead

Today's clients want to populate the web
-small files
-video
-instant upload

Nikon give
Huge files
Crud video
Crap connectivity

Nice!
 
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True North said:
Its interesting to me that Nikon doesn't step up on the video side of their game.

They are uniquely positioned to really take significant market share. I don't know why that just don't put a little more focus on integrating more video features into their cameras.
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Not only are they uniquely positioned, but they don't even have an existing video business to protect. They could destroy Canon and hurt Sony bad if they made a 1DC level dslr for a A7S price.
 
Bear in mind that Nikon is a small company in contrast to their competition, and they don't have the research and development into video tech that their competitors have, but you would think they would have leaned something after 9 years of making video enabled DSLRs.
 
Imamacuser said:
Bear in mind that Nikon is a small company in contrast to their competition, and they don't have the research and development into video tech that their competitors have...
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Nikon is owned by Mitsubishi. They have all the money they could possibly want.

Fahnon said:
Not only are they uniquely positioned, but they don't even have an existing video business to protect. They could destroy Canon and hurt Sony bad if they made a 1DC level dslr for a A7S price.
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Their "sports" camera is D5. They could have turned it into D5C (get it? ... C!). Have they even tried anything in that vein? The answer is big fat NO.
 
puredrifting said:
I am surprised people are still even buying DSLRs for pro video use.
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Ahhh... Someone thinking clearly. How many times do we have to hear "I can't believe how crippled the video features are in *insert DSLR model here*". If it's a still camera, ANY video feature, no matter how easy/trivial to implement, etc., is a bonus to the user.
 
Andrea189 said:
Am I the only one to think that despite all the shortcomings Nikon has the best colour science?
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I'm not following what you mean by shortcomings? This D850 can literally pull dual duties as both a high-end studio canera and a pro sports camera too. That's actually never really been done before in a single stills camera.

Do you mean in terms in terms of video recording?
 
Sometimes video people (including myself) won't ever understand and/or accept that sometimes stills cameras are simply made just for photography, haha.

Everyone has their preferences, but people who like DSLRs and mirrorless cams expect every single one made moving forward (probably for a few years now) to have the absolute best video quality possible with many video features.

It might sound crazy to some, but I would rather pay $7,500-$10,000 for a really amazing DSLR or mirrorless camera that shoot video than anything else.

So when new cameras with so much potential come out, but are hindered by hardware and/or a set of ideologies, it's simply disappointing to some.
 
Again, the main people who buy these cameras shoot photos.

Video is a secondary function to that and it will always will be.

The amount of people who will by any DSLR PRIMARILY for video work is infinitesimally smaller than those who will do so for photos.
 
I agree that most professional photographers will never use the video features on their pro still cameras, but I don't agree that it should stop manufactures from continuing to making the video options better (it doesn't have to be every model), or making separate models altogether.

I can name about 15 powerful DSLRS/mirrorless cameras that have pretty awesome video quality and features.

We live in a world where people have conversations with their watches and cars are about to fly...so having high-quality video in a camera shouldn't be too much to ask for even if it has to cost more.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Again, the main people who buy these cameras shoot photos.

Video is a secondary function to that and it will always will be...
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That's not true. GH4, GH5, A6300/6500, A7S/II - even as far as going back to GH2 and 5D MKII - have been "video first" hybrids. Clearly, a "video only" model with a smaller pixel count and larger pixels has a built-in advantage over a hybrid but it doesn't mean that a $3,500 hybrid in 2017 can't have features that make it a far better video performer than its self-crippled incarnation. D850 doesn't even have a Log that a similarly priced 5D MKIV has and that camera was out a year ago.

PS. As a side note, the current generation of the "8K" sensor cameras like Red Helium can also take higher quality stills and, in two generations, a camera like D850 will also be able to take 4/6/8K video. It's a trend that is simply unavoidable. The problem is that the Japanese conglomerates without any competition will delay it as far back as they can.
 
5DMKII was not "video first". At least not in the way that anyone would really consider it now. Canon had no F'n clue what was about to happen. No one did. They gave the cam some video features at the request of some of the larger newspapers/wire services so they could ALSO shoot some video in addition to the stills. The rest is history. But they're still primarily still cameras...
 
Who are these photographers one speaks of?

Yep I know one guy (sport d5) who just takes stills

But most peeps I know making a living in the media, ex photographers, are constantly asked for a bit of video during stills led shoots

You know I thought once that I was a photographer once - but my living was actually content creation.

Just with paper as the media of delivery the content needed was stills. Those same clients now need web content - and a lot of that is moving content.

Nikon used to make tools for content creators - this is a toy for artists :)
 
Grug said:
I'm not following what you mean by shortcomings? This D850 can literally pull dual duties as both a high-end studio canera and a pro sports camera too. That's actually never really been done before in a single stills camera.

Do you mean in terms in terms of video recording?
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Yes, I think the camera is great for stills and, despite the 8 bit limitation, is also good for video recording. It does seem though that the majority here prefer Sony and Panasonic mirrorless cameras for video. My trouble is that I just cannot come to like the colours of those cameras while I love the Nikon's
 
I also think we are just a couple of generations away from having RAW video on DSLR and mirrorless cameras, and that's going to wipe away almost all the IQ difference between these little cameras and their bigger $$$$ and $$$$$ video brothers. Or maybe not, we'll see.

Now, several people in this thread have mentioned that Nikon has better colors. I hear that a lot, actually. But I recently ran this blind test: a9, 1DX2 and D5, straight out of the camera, randomly reordered on each round. It turns out my preferences were Sony > Canon > Nikon, though it was a very close result (27>24>21 points). It turns out I'm a sony fanboy not just out of feature-list hype but also in terms of the actual images. So, those saying Nikon has better colors, would you go through the test and post your results?
 
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