Short movie? Anyone?

ExposedFilm

ExposedFilm

Member
Hello everyone!

I've been looking into the D90 for a few weeks now. After breaking my old DVX last year, I found myself without any video camera. After stalling for a year and borrowing equipment here and there, I decided it was time to get a new camera. I'm doing a lot of photography jobs on the side, so a D90 seem like a good option considering I already own Nikon glass.

I went through the threads on the forum and I don't mind working with a camera that's basically working against me. I know I can get good shots with it and use an external DAT to record sounds.

However, I also noticed that all the videos I saw were basically either test shots, footage with music over or video clips. Anybody tried shooting a narrative short movie with it? I'm curious to see how it would perform considering the motion problems people are mentioning and the cooldown time between takes.
 
I shot this short(link below), and I am in the process of doing another. While you can get decent exposure with the workarounds, it is still not true control. Shooting with a 11-16mm lens I hardly notice any Jello, but an 85mm can only do slow pans or stationary.

You will notice the grain, if your lighting is not sufficient, as you can see in my short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAdtYcs7qDY
There has been a look applied to the video, it is not straight from the camera.



The pluses of the camera are the lenses, and the dynamic range. But Canon does it better. Go canon if you can.
 
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=178646&highlight=korean

and here's a list of other stuff

Mattsand's movie "Fuertaventura" trailer (password= luifer)
http://vimeo.com/4293535

Model / Photographer by Zak Foresman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5TKKbR6hzw&fmt=18

Benbernscheider's "Contra"
http://www.vimeo.com/4810812

some Vinyl Stax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH_Ty06Pvzk
http://vimeo.com/3025714

Matthew Bennett weirdness, awesome reverse lens black and white stuff (comedy genius)
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=150605

Pirata's 'Vengeance Rides a Train"
http://www.dailyfilm.tv/video/vengea...rain-episode-1
 
i agree, get a camera with manual control. i probably couldn't work with the 7d aliasing though, it pretty much disqualifies it from the big screen unlike the d90 softness which is a drag but works. the 5d and the gh1 are the only cameras i would consider today, but yeah they are both more expensive...
 
the nikons also have lot of moire/aliasing/artifacts
for my part i thought i would buy a T2i because of its price, but i think i will just wait for the next generation and wait for nikon to release something new, u never know whats next.
maybe they will find solutions.
 
I loved my D90. Switched to GH1 and 7D but there's still something about those Nikon files. The Wilson fix really lays down a sweet foundation to fixing the footage.

You need light.

There was something up last year I saw off a D90, called Contra. Sick.

With a ton of light, the D90 is awesome.

I like it because the crap codec FORCES me to expose on camera correctly. Reminds me of film.

Contra. I'll look for some more.
 
bang said:
the nikons also have lot of moire/aliasing/artifacts
Click to expand...
not nearly as much. d90 footage looks uniformly crappy whereas 7d footage often looks fantastic but sometimes is completely unusable because of aliasing. there are workarounds but if you ever want to shoot handheld with wide angles and deep focus the 7d is not for you. trust me.
 
greymog said:
You need light.
Click to expand...
not more so than any other camera in my experience, more like the contrary. check out the trailer for my feature, link above, no lights. of course i had one of scandinavia's best dp's and pictures like this don't just happen, but still. you definitely don't *need* light.
 
yea i saw some bad moire with t2i and 7d,
but i think the 7D/T2i got less moire at 1080 than d90/d5000 /720p
i may be wrong but i experienced bad moire with d5000

could be interesting if someone could post a test with both canon and nikon.

here some good examples of moire with the canons http://vimeo.com/9987516 http://vimeo.com/9415412

cant find same tests for nikons i may have to post a test myself if i find the time
 
i don't mind moiree much, it still looks pretty organic. it's the aliasing of horizontal lines, not so visible in those clips actually, that just doesn't work for me. a comparison test would be be nice.
 
mattsand said:
not more so than any other camera in my experience, more like the contrary. check out the trailer for my feature, link above, no lights. of course i had one of scandinavia's best dp's and pictures like this don't just happen, but still. you definitely don't *need* light.
Click to expand...

Ooof.

Based on my experience I guess I only still need light :)

That is badass my good sir.

I stand corrected. The reason I needed light with my D90 is to force a low ISO.

I wish they had a readout at least of the shutter value and ISO.

The thing was I didn't know if I was forcing low ISO or high shutter.

T
 
Is the aliasing really bad? I went through the Wilson fix and looked at the AE Vimeo fix somebody postedhttp://vimeo.com/10130633. Since I have no D90 to experiment with at the moment, I have to ask, will that fix get rid of the jello effect? I watched the clips people posted, and aside from the SixteenPads clips, I see the jello effect all over. Image is good, DOF is delicious and I wouldn't mind postprocessing my clips to have some of that goodness!

Also, are you guys using a battery pack or a stabilization device on the D90?

Again, thanks a lot for your input. I'm giving myself the whole week to think about it before making a choice, so you'll probably get some more questions! God I miss filmmaking.
 
no the jello you have to avoid while shooting. there are many fixes but i'd suggest you only rely on them to fix and mistakes, not as part of your normal workflow. they don't always produce great results and they render slowly.
 
greymog said:
The reason I needed light with my D90 is to force a low ISO
Click to expand...
sure, but if you expose correctly it looks good even at higher iso. the problem is that the camera likes to overexpose, bringing up the noise and maybe even increasing the iso even more. just lock it to something brighter and roll. some of the scenes in that trailer were shot on a beach in the middle of the night under nothing but the streetlights from the boardwalk 20 meters away. that was pushing it though, and i had to use noise reduction on some shots in post.
 
Thanks, congratulations on your trailer by the way, I loved it! Gives me some hope for the D90. I'll do some research on how to avoid jello.
 
mattsand said:
sure, but if you expose correctly it looks good even at higher iso. the problem is that the camera likes to overexpose, bringing up the noise and maybe even increasing the iso even more. just lock it to something brighter and roll. some of the scenes in that trailer were shot on a beach in the middle of the night under nothing but the streetlights from the boardwalk 20 meters away. that was pushing it though, and i had to use noise reduction on some shots in post.
Click to expand...

Truth be told the nicest footage I shot with the exception of one GH1 scene I have in mind were taken with the D90. I had the most fun.
 
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