Nikon D800 and Atomos Ninja, very very nice footage

Danielvilliers

Danielvilliers

Veteran
This must be one if not the best professional footage I have seen from the D800.


It is in French, which I understand, but the image speaks for itself.
 
So any thought about the video. For me it is one of the most professional advert done by the D800. I would have no problem thinking that it is alexa footage if it was showing on my TV channel.
 
As Matt said, I´ve seen enough full frame sensor videos by now. Canon, Nikon, Sony, I don´t care.
There are some nice shots in the video, that would work on most current HD cameras. But there´s rolling shutter, sky replacement, low DR, that just scream "not cinema" to me.
It´s awesome we have all this inexpensive tools, but the closer we get to film or high-end HD quality with these cameras, the more I see the gap.
And although not being a BMCC fanboy, this camera (and the upcoming BM ones), might finally close the gap.
Just speaking of "the look" here.
 
I don't know where you see low DR in those shots. I see exactly the contrary, very flat imagery which is the in vogue advertising look.
 
I watched the clip twice and I have mixed impressions about it. Sharpness and low light performance is outstanding of course. But to me, it just doesn't look like film. The skin tones particularly, but also the colors.. seems like a very artificial look to me, not rich and organic, like what I would see in a film. I know the flat look is in vogue right now, but... to me it just looks boring. These DSLRs are so good in low light I guess that little effort is been paid to lighting a scene properly to get shadows, highlights and shape.

Below is just one example of a non DSLR look. Granted is not as sharp, but it looks more organic and reminiscent of film.

D800

6hkbie.jpg


Letus Ultimate ( 2010 music video screen grab )

2lt4ly9.jpg
 
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Mixed impressions here too.
Of course it is nice and serves it's purpose well, but DOF is way too shallow and this combined with the camera movement in the handheld (?) shots distract me a lot and give me the impression of a quick run and gun dslr shoot on the fly, rather than a thorough production or a film. I don't like fake anamorphic flares, but I agree these may contribute to a sci-fi look. It also looks there is some sky replacement as noted above, but I guess this is normal as all dslrs would probably burn the highlights in these scenes.
The D800 is a great camera, and this is a nice clip, but my objection overall is that I feel there is nothing here that another dslr (MarkIII, A99, to speak full frame) wouldn't do.
 
@EDV: It may be the web compression or something like that, but to my eyes, the first shot you posted looks great, the second is awful: noise and highlights on those skin tones look pretty bad to me.
 
Samuel H said:
@EDV: It may be the web compression or something like that, but to my eyes, the first shot you posted looks great, the second is awful: noise and highlights on those skin tones look pretty bad to me.
Click to expand...

It's probably the compression. Well here's two more examples.

Letus Ultimate + EX1 screen grabs

nl1rpd.jpg


2en44xv.jpg


You still like the flat look better? serious?

6hkbie.jpg
 
Ok, these don't have the horrible noise of the first one, the kid looks great but the old guy still has extreme highlight syndrome. I'm not saying the D800 kid looks insanely great, I don't particularly care for the look either, but it's a nice clean image that you could grade to taste if you want something else.
 
I am on the same boat as Samuel H here. It is a look that was chosen for this advertising. In fact it is much more difficult to get this flat look because the DR has to be much more to get the flat look. The old guy looks video to me, because the DR is quite low. Just look at the ugly blown out highlight on the forehead, even if it does not seem to be a sunny day. That hard clipping is very video for me. The children is better but again no sign of direct sun.

The last thing, the D800 DR in video mode counts from about 11-11.5 (By Samuel) and 11.9 by the bbc camera test. Which is much higher than video camera. It does not mean that because it is a dslr it must have low DR. If someone could hack it like the 5d3, we would be in the Alexa range.
 
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