Does this kill mini35's?

The new Nikon D90 will have an HD movie mode that shoots 24fps with sound.

http://gizmodo.com/5041991/nikon-d90-available-for-pre+order-from-circtuit-city-hd-movie-mode-confirmed

I am wondering first if anyone knows if this will be 720 or 1080. What format will this be in (aspect ratio and multimedia)? What controls are retained (auto to full manual?)? Are there any time-limits?

Seems to me that for $1300, less than some of the nicer mini35 systems, this could be another killer camcorder (and camera).

Thoughts or opinions?

Hard to say. We'll have to see the video quality. I've seen some nice digital still cams make lousy video. Usually due to the compression.

NobleWay wrote:

The new Nikon D90 will have an HD movie mode that shoots 24fps with sound.

http://gizmodo.com/5041991/nikon-d90-available-for-pre+order-from-circtuit-city-hd-movie-mode-confirmed

I am wondering first if anyone knows if this will be 720 or 1080. What format will this be in (aspect ratio and multimedia)? What controls are retained (auto to full manual?)? Are there any time-limits?

Seems to me that for $1300, less than some of the nicer mini35 systems, this could be another killer camcorder (and camera).

Thoughts or opinions?

Cam has HMDI out. Add an intensity card might be a great combo for controlled setups. Will have to wait for better info/specs but I am interested for sure. The CMOS is huge on that thing.

VERY interesting. Actual operation would be kind of bizarre - run and gun? Probably not. But for tripod-centric shoots, I can see it working. Maybe even steadicam work, depending on how the auto focus would work.

Would it have audio inputs of any kind? And HDMI out? That's...wow.

I'm just trying to get my mind around the idea of shooting a film with an SLR. Weird.

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It would be similar to this Scarlet config that Stu posted about on his blog: http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-am-excited.html

Another benefit my director friend mentioned would be the availability to shoot in public places as the camera would be consider just that - a camera, even with a tripod. That would be fantastic for guerrilla work.

I am doubting it will have any audio in but Digital Audio Recorders have gotten extremely cheap recently. It also comes with a VR lens (Vibration Reduction) that should act as OS on a camcorder.

If anyone can find more information - especially video - I would be ecstatic to see it.

EDIT: Just read that the official announcement is tomorrow so we should have all the specs then.

Oh well. The final specs are as follows:

"It shoots 1280x720p video at 24fps with a 16:9 aspect ratio for up to five minutes, producing around a 600MB file. It's essentially recording the Live View feed (which gets its own button) so focus is locked because the mirror has moved out of the way, and you get mono sound. The major appeal is that it'll work with any of your lenses, so you can do wacky HD clips with a fisheye lens on the (relatively) cheap or be artsy and use a shallow depth of field."
(Source: http://gizmodo.com/5042209/nikon-d90-official-first-dslr-ever-with-hd-video-recording)

While still exciting and useful in it's own niche, it is not at all a mini35/HD cam killer.

That's disappointing. Looks like it'll only be useful in experimental filmmaking situations.

Still, as an added feature to an already good camera, it's great.

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Don't Nikon SLR lenses allow manual focus? I don't imagine that focus would be "locked" so much as "in your hands."

What is very likely though is that you'd have no manual control over the shutter interval.

-Stu

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It's a great new feature! if it has great sensitivity, it'd kick ass.

id buy it but the hmc150 is really humping my leg right now.. or the scarlet...now thats my dilemma Sad

As I understand it the camera automatically controls ISO and shutter interval in auto exposure mode. But it is also possible to lock the exposure, perhaps that will make it possible to control the shutter interval.

-Espen

Here are some sample videos from Nikon's site:
http://nikonusa.com/Assets/Digital-SLR/25446-Nikon-D90/Video/DSC_0095.flv
http://nikonusa.com/Assets/Digital-SLR/25446-Nikon-D90/Video/DSC_0349.flv

The movies the camera records are motion JPEG in AVI.

	NobleWay wrote:
	Here are some sample videos from Nikon's site: http://nikonusa.com/Assets/Digital-SLR/25446-Nikon-D90/Video/DSC_0095.flv http://nikonusa.com/Assets/Digital-SLR/25446-Nikon-D90/Video/DSC_0349.flv The movies the camera records are motion JPEG in AVI.

Well, I´m not impressed by these clips, but hopefully the the conversion to flash video at a bitrate of 0.78 Mbps is the reason these look pretty bad.

-Espen

It would be nice to see some better quality, but also some shots that weren't zoomed way in. Something like a public street or something like that. Not nature in the early morning light. Of course that will look lovely. Let's see an overcast day in New York.

Since Stu posted a blog entry on this camera earlier today, I´ve been looking around to see if I could find out any more about it. According to this site http://www.digitalreview.ca/content/Nikon-D90-D80-D300-Canon-50D-Compared.shtml the aperture does not change during recording, and there is the option of locking exposure (as in ISO and shutter). They also say that max aperture in movie mode is f/8. I don´t understand why there would be a aperture limit, but I´ve seen that mentioned one other place as well.

There is some new HD footage on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/1627718#success .It can be downloaded in 720p in the lower right corner. It´s not really the original since it has been transcoded to H.264 at 8Mbps, but it looks pretty good. I think that night scene would be really hard to pull of with a small sensor camcorder.

-Espen

dfreerider wrote:

Since Stu posted a blog entry on this camera earlier today, I´ve been looking around to see if I could find out any more about it. According to this site http://www.digitalreview.ca/content/Nikon-D90-D80-D300-Canon-50D-Compared.shtml the aperture does not change during recording, and there is the option of locking exposure (as in ISO and shutter). They also say that max aperture in movie mode is f/8. I don´t understand why there would be a aperture limit, but I´ve seen that mentioned one other place as well.

There is some new HD footage on Vimeo http://vimeo.com/1627718#success .It can be downloaded in 720p in the lower right corner. It´s not really the original since it has been transcoded to H.264 at 8Mbps, but it looks pretty good. I think that night scene would be really hard to pull of with a small sensor camcorder.

-Espen

looks like there are exposure changes during the shots. perhaps they aren't locking the exposure like might be possible. Also, when the skateboard is moved downward, it looks like it gets a gigantic skew from rolling shutter (I know, I know, here we go again). I noticed this from the behind the scenes Chase movie as well. At the end when the camera pans it was the biggest example of skew Ive seen from a camera. Just a possible concern to throw out there and examine.

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