Nikon D800 - Indoor Video Use?

<p>I'm shooting a promo video later this month for a veterinary MRI, CT & RT center (MRI, Cat Scan and Radiation Treatment) and have shown them that shooting with a DSLR and proper lenses will give them a much more cinematic look, as compared to using a 3CCD camera system.</p>

<p>This video will primarily be shot indoors, during the day, with natural lighting conditions. The natural lighting conditions include both room light and light streaming in through the windows, tho not all rooms will have windows. As this video will involve MRI, CT and RT treatments, some of this will be in low light, meaning just light from the control panels and monitors in the rooms where the staff is monitoring the treatments.</p>

<p>I was thinking about shooting with the D800 since between my friend and I, we have a lot of Nikon lenses and would only have to rent the camera body, so we could keep costs pretty low. However, I have seen videos comparing the D800 to the 5D Mark II and Mark II, specifically in low light and the D800 does appear to suffer when it comes to noise. However, this does make sense, since the the Nikon's increase in pixels should lead to more image noise. Below is the video I'm referring to:</p>

<p>http://vimeo.com/40113110</p>

<p>Granted that video is shot in candlelight, but I don't want to have that obnoxious noise of the D800 if I'm in lower light situations. Granted I haven't been able to grab a D800 and go to the site to test things out, but I'm just wondering if anyone has opinions on whether the D800 would be good for this job.</p>

<p>Unless you are shooting by candlelight, I don't think you need to be concerned (and even then I would not be too concerned - NR can be applied during editing if needed). You best bet is to grab a D800 and go to the site and test things out, don't you think?</p>

<p>I do agree. Since we're not shooting until the 28th, I have plenty of time to do that.</p>

<p>I'd probably go with a 3CCD camera in view of the subject matter - promo video for a veterinary MRI, CT & RT center. <br>

<br>

The "cinematic look", ie, shallow DoF might detract by making itself too visually prominent - a common characteristic among amaturish-looking productions. A decent 3CCD camera/lens will also do much better under low light. </p>

<p>I would look at this, <a href="

to me is a real everyday comparison. The D800 videos are amazing! I think the D800 makes the best video in a dslr. The detail, clarity, skin tones, the example above shows very well how good its video really is it just jumps at you.</p>

<p>No matter what you do the full frame sensor of the D800 is likely to outperform all normal video cameras you may have access to in low light. I have a 3 CCD Panasonic TM900 which is about $1000 the D800 video blows it away. However, the camcorder works in places my DSLR can't you have to avoid autofocus. When autofocusing you'll pick up the lens movment noise in the microphone and the contrast focus system all DSLR's use is too slow to keep up with people moving towards/away from the camera. If you haven't take a look at the video Reverie on youtube, sure it advertises the mk II but it points out how good a dslr video can look (I think the D800 video looks better) but also the limitations... at no point in the entire video does the camera autofocus, the entire thing is done with the camera prefocused to a specific depth, and it never changes. In one scene the camera is prefocused and the guy walks into the focus plane, pauses, then leaves that was neat.</p>

<p>I think the D800 would be fantastic but you have to decide/realize if you can utilize it by places/situations you can mount it on a tripod and don't touch the focus/autofocus or plan on manually focusing the lens to avoid the lens noise. If you can think of some, I think it worth renting the D800 video is amazing.</p>

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<p>A decent 3CCD camera/lens will also do much better under low light.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>There are no 3-CCD cameras under $100,000 that I'm aware of that have a senor bigger than a point and shoot. Means 3CCD cameras are generally top out at ISO 800, if that, more like ISO 400 before they become completely crappy. Newer cameras are better, but they still would not outperform a DSLR. Their one advantage is because of the ridiculously small sensor, they usually have a F/1.8-F/4ish zoom, (Wouldn't it be nice to have a 28-400mm equivalent zoom that was F/1.8-F/4 for the D800? Besides costing the price a really nice house and weighing 25lbs or so, it would be totally awesome!) without too many depth of field problems, because the sensor is soooo small.</p>

<p>The D800 is an excellent choice. Just remember its a bad idea to under expose in terms of noise and an even worse idea to shoot wide open on fast lenses, it can be surprisingly difficult to focus even F/2.8 lenses on a full frame sensor. If you plan on shooting wide open in low light, I can't recommend a monitor of some kind enough. Even if you grab a 20-some-inch TV you or your friend has around the house and use the HDMI out of the D800 to see the image big, its highly recommended. Even if you aren't shooting wide open I would highly recommend it (just don't trust the image you see in terms of exposure, its for focus only) Remember even under natural light, its just a really bad idea of using say, the 85mm F/1.8G @ even F/2 or F/2.8 for interviews, because more often than not your interviewee will learn toward the camera to make a point and in the process go out of focus, and as you try to rack back and forth, you'll get the amateurish effect Michael mentioned. At least F/4 would be recommended (unless your focal length is 35mm and wider, then you might be able to get away with F/2.8 or maybe F/2 if you were on the 24mm. Of course if you put the camera right in their face to a get a tight framing like you wood with an 85mm, then you're back at using F/4 to keeping everything in focus) If you do run into depth of field issues, try using the crop mode on the D800, you'll have to move back but you will effectively reduce your depth of field.</p>

<p>Also I would recommend trying to rent an HDMI external recorder of some type. It will preserve much more file integrity, allowing for better post processing, and also a lot quicker editing because most recorders will shoot directly to Prores. Especially if you plan on de-noising in post.</p>

<p>The 5D vs D800 you compared was interesting. The 5D does look better, but I really don't think its a fair comparison and here is why. The D800 as you noticed was quite a bit brighter. That's because the 5D is crushing the blacks. Means the D800 looks nastier because its getting details where the 5Ds are simply going to black, making them look cleaner. The 5D mkIII is a superior low light camera and if you plan on going past ISO 1600, I do highly recommend it over the D800. However, if you were to shoot the 5D mkII and the D800 in an environment where the background was of equal low light as foreground, I think you would find the 5D mkII noise is much more and much nastier than the D800's. Not to say either camera is bad; most cameras can't even reach ISO 1600 (and by that I mean video cameras) without looking bad. None the less as a professional, I would recommend never going above ISO 800, and that's properly exposed. If you have to, rent lights and bright the levels up to levels that are acceptable (like ISO 400).</p>

<p>Skyler, have you ever used a professional grade 3CCD camera? </p>

<p>As a small reference point to this conversation, I shot some video as a test last week using the D800E. I didn't have any of the lenses with me that I would have preferred to use, since I wasn't planning on doing so. I used a very old, but still sharp 135mm f2.8 Lens at:<br>

<br /> ISO 2200, 1/30 f/5.6 @ 1920 x 1080, Movie Quality: 30fps, High Quality, White Balance: Auto1, Color Space: Adobe RGB, Picture Control: [VI] VIVID<br>

<br /> I saved the sample JPG image directly out of the source MOV file using Nikon's Movie Editor, and then opened, cropped and resaved this smaller section out again as a JPG so there is a slight quality drop on this second JPG save. Since I have not asked for rights to post anything from the event, I don't feel I can upload anything larger than what I will here.<br /> Over all I was quite impressed with what I was able to obtain, knowing nothing really of what I was doing, or what I was going to get out of the settings I used. (I wouldn't quite recommend all those I used here.)<br>

<br /> I wasn't quite focused on this person, I was though less than a foot behind him using live view.</p><div></div>

<p>Out of interest, would I be right in believing that the D800 simply reads 1920x1080 pixels out of the sensor (spaced appropriately) rather than fully interpolating/batching the sensor pixels? The latter would require a lot of processing; I suspect the D4 is trying to do something like this at larger sizes, which is why there have been reports that its video is "soft" except in DX mode.</p>

<p>I bring it up only because the normal reports of the D800's low-light excellence apply only when noise is considered at the frame level - the per-pixel noise, while impressive <em>considering</em>, isn't class-leading. A lower-resolution camera might well do better, if the D800 isn't interpolating. If the D800 <em>is</em> using all its pixels to generate the image, apologies for any confusion I may just have caused.</p>

<p>Thank you all for your input. I actually do have a professional 3CCD camera - a Sony HXR-NX5U, which I have used for all of the veterinary promos that I've done so far. I'd like to spice this one up a bit tho, as the look of the NX5U is basically always the same - everything is always in focus, less manual control for the lens, etc.</p>

<p>Here's another video done comparing the 5D Mark II, Mark III and D800. It was made after the first video drew comparisons that the D800 was brighter than the 5D at the same ISO.</p>

<p>http://vimeo.com/42381520</p>

<p>Wow, the 5DMkIII puts the D800 to shame.</p>

<p>I wonder if the D600 would be better? I suspect it would be.</p>

<p>Out of curiosity, what about audio for your project. Is it synced?</p>

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<p>D800 simply reads 1920x1080 pixels out of the sensor</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thom reports that the video is actually down sampled from a 2240x1260 sub sample to the final resolution of 1920x1080.</p>

<p>It seems that the 5D Mark III puts the D800 to shame at higher ISO values. But, if you look at the <a href="

posted by Matt Donuts, this test shows that the D800 looks a lot nicer than the 5D Mark III, granted the ISO value isn't set too high.</p>

<p>I ended up choosing the D800 for my project. In terms of audio, I was just planning on recording to the D800 using an external mic. There's not a big budget for this project and we can't afford to rent audio recorders, external video recorders, etc.</p>