| Joined: | Fri Apr 13th, 2012 |
| Location: | Fareham, United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 1803 |
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For a start the D800 uses the same 1920x1080 25fps PAL settings, finished footage shows no advantage in terms of colour or sharpness but fine detail is of a very high order. On time line with Sony pro AVCHD footage it is a fair match but no better.
You can only shoot using live view, very hard to use out doors in sun even using a loop it is not easy to check focus and compose. The D800 does not have steady-cam so hand held movie is very unsteady and not suitable for professional use. Hand holding with the Sony has state of art steady-cam and first-class eye level viewfinder and well as fold out LCD so you have best of both types of viewing. To get steady pix with the D800 you must use a pro video tripod and quality fluid head all the time.
The D800 manual settings are tucked away in Menus and not easy to get to when you are doing action shooting. It is almost impossible to do smooth zooming with still photography type zoom lenses. Pro movie cameras have good progressive motor driven zoom lenses made for the job.
Auto focus sort of works but is very poor compared with using the D800 camera for stills. One would need a pro follow focus device and these cost serious money and require skill to use.
Sound is another story. The D800 needs to be wired into a pro mixer and sound system with quality mikes. The built in mike on D800 is only mono and wind noise outdoors is a night-mare. I do have the Nikon ME-1 Stereo Mike with wind shield fits on hot-shoe. It is OK in light wind but heavy wind is bad news. Sound quality is OK but for interviews you would still need full pro mike set-up.
If you were a news photographer on a solo hot story your D800 stills pix would be world beating but any D800 movie better than nothing but not up to the standard you could get with any pro camcorder and even some of the sub £1000 little camcorders could do better.(THE D800 IS THE DSLR I HAVE HAVE OWNED TO DATE BUT NOT FOR MOVIE)
WHAT DO OTHER USERS THINK?
Last edited on Fri Jul 13th, 2012 13:56 by Graham Whistler
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Graham Whistler