Browsing Category Video

St. Patrick's Church, San Francisco, 2012. Nikon D7000.

Nikon D7000: Closer Look, and a Peek at the D800

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Doug Luberts

Time’s flown pretty fast since last March, when I wrote this post about first impressions of my new Nikon D7000. Seems like I really owe my readers an update on the camera, and my experiences with it since then.

I love the D7000. It creates amazing images, and finally gives me the level of camera that I need to create images that are as compelling, and reach the same kind of quality, that could be achieved with Nikon film bodies during the analog shooting days.

Not going to get into a big tech analysis on the camera features…Think I covered that in the previous post, linked above, and there’s also a lot of online coverage and fact sheets available.

The D7000 is a strong shooter, build-to-last, and with a control set that will be comfortable to all Nikon shooters as soon as they pick the camera up.

For stills, in conjunction with Adobe Lightroom, it’s a superstar.

St. Patrick's Church, San Francisco, 2012. Nikon D7000. Processed in Adobe Lightroom.

For Digital Cinema applications, the D7000 is a major leap forward for Nikon. The D90 was flawed, to the point of almost being useless for video, by a slow sensor and resulting digital artifacts.

Nikon still has a way to go, and I think they actually got there with the newly-announced D800, which is a superb cinema camera with updated features and ergonomics not found in the D7000.

I’m including the Nikon “Joy Ride” video, shot with the D800, to give you an idea of what this new camera is capable of, and you can keep up to date on the D800, and all other Nikon news at NikonRumors.com, which is my go-to news source for all things Nikon.

While I’m still shooting all of my web video with the D7000, and the video is gorgeous, the biggest issues with the camera revolve around the need to set exposure outside of live view mode, and then go back into live view to capture your video…It’s a pain in the butt. Nothing more than an annoyance that doesn’t affect the quality of the work, but the shooting experience suffers for it.

Changes made to camera settings while in live view aren’t reflected in exposure, and live view does not give you exposure information in the LCD.

Also, Nikon just doesn’t seem to care enough about the workflow…Where Canon offers plugins for FCP, and other software, to make the ingest experience seamless, Nikon is an all manual process involving copying files and transcoding, and possibly having issues with Gamma viewing problems in FCP that are just more work than they are worth…I’m going to be buying a Canon, likely a D60, this year for shooting video, as Nikon just doesn’t seem to want to get the workflow right for HDSLR shooters.

The lack of a headphone jack on the camera was a huge mistake…One that I resolved by using a Juiced Link DSLR Pre-amp Adapter for $144, which you should just figure in as part of the cost of the camera if you’re going to be shooting video…It’s worth it, and an absolute necessity if you are doing single-system sound.

The audio quality out of the D7000 is not bad, and good enough for single-subject interviews, but you’ll likely want to go dual system for anything more elaborate than an interview setup. In that case the Zoom H4n is still the best, and most versatile option for web shooters.

This Juiced Link DSLR mic pre-amp includes the headphone jack that Nikon left off the camera, and is a must for video shooters.

Another great thing about the D7000 is that it works with all of the Nikon AF-S/AF-D line of lenses, which you can pick up on eBay for a song. The older lenses are a bit slower focusing than their newer counterparts, and don’t have the VR (vibration-reduction) features, but they do have an aperture ring, great glass, and create awesome images. One big advantage that you don’t find with the red-ring lenses so highly coveted by Canon shooters.

On the whole, the D7000 is an amazing camera, and the best ‘pro-sumer’ (emphasis on the pro) camera Nikon makes before you get into the D800 realm … Something I hope to do within the next year.

Ciji and Adrian, February 2012. Nikon D300. The older D300 produces great results, but its auto-focus system and sensor are no match for the D7000.

Canon Announcements from San Francisco FCPUG SuperMeet

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Doug Luberts

Tonight was the annual San Francisco FCPUG SuperMeet at the Mission Bay Conference Center. Amidst the usual assortments of technical demos, vendor presentations and creator show ‘n tells, Canon made some new announcements of both hardware and software.

First up was a demo of a soon-to-be-released Final Cut Pro Plugin for managing DSLR footage shot with the EOS 5D Mk II or 7D (presumably with the 1D Mark IV as well) that was pretty damn spiffy.

The plugin opens up a log and transfer window that allows capture off of SD media via a card reader, directly into Final Cut Pro. The kicker here is that it preserves all of the camera metadata, including lens info, and backs up the original media to a disk image (.dmg) file on your PC. This adds a lot of flexibility to the 5D/7D workflow and creates an option for doing an offline review of your materials and a selects-only ingest.

The FCP plugin will be available for download from the Canon site, soon.

Canon also introduced a new codec earlier in the week. It’s a 50mb MPEG2 codec that uses 4:2:2 color sampling and long-GOP (15 frame) compression. Aside from wondering if, in these days of H.264 and emerging standards for AVC-Intra, there is really a future for MPEG2, it was kind of disappointing to hear that this new codec is only going to be available for their new video camera model, and is not planned as a part of their DSLR strategy. Canon also showed clips of product managers from all of the top non-linear editing companies indicating their plans to support the new codec.

An unlabeled, non-functional, prototype of the new camera was on display in the vendor area, and the Canon rep had no ETA on when the camera would be ready or what features it may have. This was reinforced by an almost Apple-like disclaimer about not making any statements with regard to future product offerings.

Hey, guys? Could you vague that up a little? That was the biggest non-announcement I’ve ever heard. “We have a great new codec with no name that will be implemented on a new, also unnamed, camera, for which we do not have a feature list, specs, or a release date … Oh, and even if we did we wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

It was just a bit absurd, but I’ll take the FCP plugin. It should be worth it’s weight in drive-space-saving gold.

Congrats to event Producers Michael Horton, Daniel Berubi, and company for another great event … I’m already looking forward to the NAB Supermeet in April.

GarageBand and Other Modern Conveniences

Posted on September 7, 2005 by Doug Luberts

Yesterday was a great example of how you can sidetracked, happily, into another direction.

I started messing around with GarageBand ’08 … Something I guess I had been dismissing as a toy for a number of years. Now, I’m thinkin’, not so much.

I’ve got a Kork XDR5 that, although about 10 years old, is a pretty powerful box, as well as a Fatar and Oxygen8 keyboard. The Fatar and the Korg have been sitting in my office (along with my Fender Strat), unplayed, for years now as I just never seem to have the time to sit down and really learn the piano. While I was a percussionist for years, music theory is not my thing, and I don’t have any really heavy performance skills. So I was surprised when I was able to sit down and really start laying out some tracks that sounded pretty good.

The next think I know it’s three in the afternoon and I’m heading for the Apple Store to pick up a couple of Jam Packs and a Blue Snowball USB mic. Fast forward a couple of hours and I’ve a multi-track score ready for mix-down and then fine tuning in Soundtrack Pro … Not to mention I can quickly pull out little bits and pieces for quick re-arrangement of the pieces.

I like GarageBand … a lot. It may very well be a toy, but that’s only in the sense that it’s fun to play with. It’s a very sophisticated too. Who knows, maybe some day I’ll even move up to LogicPro.

I’m using the M-Audio Oxygen8 keyboard to drive this … I’m not really playing any extended passages, so the two-octave USB keyboard works fine for the purpose. M-Audio makes a GarageBand Controller and a Drum controller that also look pretty cool.

As far as performance goes, I’m running about 10 tracks right now, and will probably have 18-20 by the time I’m finished … My 24″ iMac (2.4 Ghz Intel Core2 Duo) is handling it without any stress. We’ll have to see what happens when I get it all into SoundTrack Pro for the final mix.

So, I’m sold … GarageBand is definitely a tool worthy of consideration for any filmmaker’s toolkit, especially on a budget.