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Absolutely. In fact, most of this article just re-covered the ground of Andrew's fairly recent "Dear Nikon" article. I was hoping for a more in-depth review of the actual camera. Not another generalised rant about why MFT cameras are great. I have a G6 and love it, and agree that mirrorless is the future, but my D5300 is getting more use ATM because I like the image so much. Often I don't find the Nikon quite sharp enough, but resolution is OK and the other qualities trump the G6 for me. The 5300 really is a pain in the neck to shoot with though. There is a lot about this article that is right, but there is also a lot that is unsaid or unacknowledged. There are some things I'm very disappointed EOSHD didn't address and that I actually feel make this quite a misleading/lazy review. My responses to the article are below, mainly adding up to my opinion that for everything the D5300 lacks compared to other similarly priced cameras, it makes up for in other areas - making it one of the best all round choices at the moment. Having said that, I do completely agree that in a year's time the level of detail on the 5300 will look slightly archaic, and the extremely frustrating interface design and feature set makes it extremely frustrating and probably a no-go for a lot of work. So, addressed in article-order: Quote The D5300 comes into a world where video enthusiasts are shooting 4K on Panasonic consumer cameras Er, not yet they're not. And the D5300 actually came out in 2013. Quote I just wanted to shoot nice 1080p, conveniently, for a low price with interchangeable lenses. The D5300 to some is $799 for a Super 35mm camera that shoots quite nice 1080p with no moire & aliasing problems, good in low light, great articulated screen – and free Nikon stills camera into the bargain. Agreed. This is where I'm coming from. Quote I just cannot get over the… Baby Photo Mode This is all an important point, but not really a problem specific to the 5300. But agreed. Nikon are being stupid about their video mode, and so are Canon. Quote The LCD has almost invisibly faint transparent masking marks for 16:9 I don't find this a problem at all, once you're used to it. A small, small, tiny inconvenience. Quote Simply by repackaging the D5300 and redesigning the firmware, Nikon could make it 10x more useful for everyone in the world with an interest in shooting artistic video. Again, agreed. Hugely frustrating. Quote The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is $999 with a 10bit 4:2:2 ProRes codec, crisp detail and 13 stops of dynamic range. The D5300 does have a better screen than the Pocket Camera, which is articulated and it does have an APS-C sensor, 1080/60p in addition to the film frame rate of 24p and 25p, so it’s not all bad… The Pocket has a very different workflow that a lot of shooters just aren't going to want, and is even more frustrating to use than the 5300 in many ways. Quote Neither can quite match the GH3 for detail in 1080p (let alone the GH4). I believe the trick Panasonic are using to give us such crisp 1080p on their cameras is to down-sample the sensor to roughly 2.5K and then oversample 1080p from that higher resolution raw image. The D5300 looks like the 5D Mark III’s stock video mode for resolution – it’s a bit mushy. You notice this the most when shooting in daylight at focus points between infinity and roughly 5 meters. Sometimes you don’t notice the softness much at all, so it’s not the camera’s main problem. Agreed. Interesting theory about Panasonic too. Quote Standard or Vivid picture profile ... Whatever method you use the results after grading look similar. FFS ANDREW WHY HAVE YOU NEGLECTED TO TALK ABOUT FLAAT?! Quote Low light performance is very good, even with the focus assist zoomed in 2 levels you will find it difficult to see any noise on the LCD while out shooting in low light at ISO 800. The image maintains rich colour at high ISOs and on brighter areas of the image at high ISOs noise almost vanishes altogether. ISO 1600 and 3200 are perfectly usable in video mode and even 6400 and 12,800 are better than on many cameras at the same price, closer in fact to the Super 35mm sensor in the Sony FS100. IMO this is the major strength of the camera. It is superior to the Pocket, even with Speed Booster, here - because the Pocket has very washed-out colours in low light that completely negate it's low-noise levels. I haven't had a chance to look at how the GM1/GX7 do in low light (and forthcoming GH4). I really hope the GH4 matches the 5300 here. That will make me really happy. Quote The punch-in focus assist is generally a bit slow to use and you can’t simply half-press the shutter button to come back out of it, instead you have to tediously reverse back out out with the ‘minus’ key. Minor niggle and entirely wrong. Pressing 'OK' (centre button) brings you straight out. Quote The lens mount is way too restrictive. Seriously, WTF? You go on about the graetness of the Speed Booster all the time. Pocket + SB = awesome. Nikon mount = grim. But I agree that it's ridiculous the way Nikon cripple their low-end cameras for using their own glass. Quote with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 any lens you put on it automatically has class-leading stabilisation better than any VR lens in the entire Nikon range including their pro lenses. This is the case with any camera other than Olympus - not just Nikon!!! Quote Last year’s D5200 has an identical image in video mode and costs just $400 used, which makes it hard to justify the D5300 if you don’t need 1080/60p. On the surface this is true, but in actuality it is entirely, categorically false. The D5300 has none of the banding/fixed pattern noise of the 5200. This means far better low light performance and crucially, AMAZING DYNAMIC RANGE POTENTIAL USING FLAT PROFILES. I know that you know about this Andrew. WHY HAVE YOU NEGLECTED TO TALK ABOUT THIS?!?! A quote you made on our older D5300 thread: Quote EOSHD, on 16 Jan 2014 - 8:11 PM, said: Today I bought a Nikon D5300 for review, and a bit of shooting, but mainly for the blog with intention of sending it back after. Well, so far it is surprising me. The dynamic range with the flat picture profile is really quite something. Head to toe with ProRes on the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. I'd put it at 12 stops. Very good colour and good shadows, and again good low light performance. The codec in 1080/60p seems ok so far too. The main drawback seems to be the cheap-mid-range Nikon ergonomics (not enough buttons and dials). Wish they had put this video mode (and articulated screen) in the D7100 instead. But so far so good peeps! Why didn't you address this in the article? You do know about this. DYNAMIC RANGE IS A MAJOR, MAJOR PRO OF THIS CAMERA. Far superior to any other low-bitrate camera in the price-bracket. Quote As of today, DSLR video is over. Dead. Kaput! Er, I'd probably pick a GH4 over a 5D+RAW for convenience's sake and features, but I'm pretty sure I'll prefer the 5D image (?) and I think we'll be seeing just as much 5D RAW as ever, even after the GH4 is out. But yes, I hope in the long-run mirrorless is the direction we are headed in (and I believe it is too). Quote The lack of video features and 4K will put DSLRs at a very significant disadvantage on performance relative to the best mirrorless cameras this year. Agreed. Quote To give you an idea of how antiquated the D5300 form factor is you still can’t change the aperture from the camera whilst live-view mode is engaged. Why on Earth not? Agreed. Ridiculous. Quote But in the cold light of day for $1999 (maybe less by the time final pricing is announced), Panasonic offer us 4K video. At $799 Nikon offer us a Baby Photo Mode. Why bother with this crap any more? Really? Ridiculous comment. $2000 is is over twice as much as $800. For some people that's a big difference. Quote Pros OK video quality and very good low light performance Better than Canon Rebels and 70D on image quality, for both video and stills Pleasing colour straight out of the MOV files, richness of tone maintained in low light 1080/60p useful for slow-motion video when converted to more cinematic 24p frame rate 38Mbit codec avoids break-up in 1080/60p mode (only 24Mbit VBR in 24p and 25p mode though) No significant moire or aliasing issues (though resolution falls short of being truly full HD) PAL / NTSC switchable for wide variety of frame rates Manual focus magnification has an ultra-detailed display mode (though painfully slow frame rate) Quicktime MOV file format benefits (easy editing and access, thumbnail preview in Explorer and Finder) Very nice smartphone standard 3.2″ articulated screen The sensor produces immaculate stills quality for the price $799 Agree with all of these, though it seems almost misleading for someone with the respect you have from your readers to neglect talking about dynamic range with the D5300. IMO DR is on-par with low-light as the greatest strength of this camera. Quote Cons Charmless – looks cheap, bland shooting experience Very poor ergonomics by Nikon standards Extremely dated form factor I really like the size, weight and shape of the camera. It is a pain in the backside to use though. Quote No real improvement in image quality over the D5200 in terms of video or raw stills FFingF's sake!!! The banding is gone!!! That was THE major drawback of the D5200. You said so yourself when you reviewed that camera! At least bloody mention it!!! Quote Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera offers much better image for filmmakers (13 stop dynamic range, 10bit ProRes 422) for just $200 more The Pocket workflow is a very, very different proposition for some people, and it requires a much greater outlay in terms of gear and time spent in post. The 5300 is also a much better all-rounder. I agree wholeheartedly with all of your other cons. As is becoming standard Andrew, I have been very critical of you. As always I still have the greatest respect for you and your site (in fact I may actually just change my signature to say this ;) ).

I have zero interest in this camera, but this is the most thoroughly enjoyable/hilarious review I have ever read. These hollow, plastic DSLR's are akin to Fisher-Price kiddies cameras in terms of haptics. Perhaps this is the reason the D5300 features a Baby mode.

Original music by Berlin electronic act Herdwhite - see more on iTunes 9b1ac465df855a9bc029756b08a6a8ff >Join EOSHD on Facebook - we broke 10,000 likes and counting yesterday - thank you everyone I’ll start this review with a parable. It is a parable about an old man, who fell asleep... Read the full article here

Then don't watch this...     Shot on GoPro :)

Hello Everyone ! This is my first post here but i visit EOSHD on a daily basis :) I just received the cinemorphfilter from vidatlantic and im realy impressed so far. The Filter is on front of an old nikkor 50mm ai-s lens (99$ :D ) and creates very nice bokeh and flares. You loose 1 to 2 stops light tho. I shot all on 800 ASA , 24p and 180 shutter. Was all handheld so i failed to stabilze the footage in post, thats why it looks so strange in the beginning. http://youtu.be/tmh2QmraE7c

I think this should have been two different articles Andrew...

I've tested them side by side and found that for video, the noise handling on the D5300 is definitely much better than on the D5200, especially at higher ISOs. The improvement appears to be specific to video though because the stills are about the same in that regard. I suspect the faster processor in the D5300 has allowed more sophisticated down-sampling algorithms to be applied to the signal coming off the sensor at the speed needed for video.

Thanks for the review, I am in some ways as anoyed as you about Nikon having all the tech but not using it to the fullest. I have been saying it for ages, if they want to make a splash in video world, they should do some revolutionary steps like at least internal 10 bit high bitrate or even raw nowadays. But credit should be given to them where it is due. I think that Nikon thought that giving uncompressed hdmi out 2 years ago would have done the trick, but unfortunately they could not guest that, most other manufacturer would follow rapidly and that Blackmagic and ML would follow. Taking them outside of the highlight. But in the mean time they have been constantly updating there camera to sampling more pixel and downscaling to get rid of moire/aliasing and giving very good low light and now adding 60fps at 1080p. More so that they are implementing those tech in there entry level camera first, not afraid to cannibalize there higher end camera at least in the video side. That is why you find yourself in the situation as you mentioned in your article that the low end camera is better than the higher end one. Would you have preferred that they keep that tech until they update the D4, D800, D600 and D7100. They are actually updating their camera line with the expeed 4 and a new D4s has been announced and we can expect a D7200 in the near future. The only problem is the Sony based Sensor D800 and D610 which might only do line skipping and that is perhaps why Nikon has been abandoning Sony sensors. You have also been comparing the D5300 against a plethora of other cameras and each of them with their fort. The D5300 does not beat any of them at one thing but it might be todays most balance camera in the DSLR world. It might not match the 13 stop of DR of the pocket, But it matches by your say in Proress mode and so should be 1 to 1.5 stop better than the Canons. But it has a Cine 35 mm sensor, no ugly moire/aliasing and will surely beat it in low light and you can do good slow motion. You could even add an external recorder to get high bitrate. Talking about external recorder, I have a Ninja with my D7100 and it really completes the Nikons, apart from the obvious high bitrate, you get peaking, false colour, zebras, sound monitoring in a very compact package. I think the d7200 will be the Nikon camera to get shortly for photo/video hybrid Nikon users. The body will be much better in terms of button and construction. I don't know why the D5200/D5300 (perhaps Nikon doin it deliberately to differentiate camera), But the D7100 is nearly as sharp as a gh2. With a Ninja it is even sharper. My guess is that a D7200 would be very very close to a Canon C100 and have equal functionality with a Ninja with the added bonus of 60p for 1/3 the price. Again I would have liked Nikon to be bolder, but this camera might not be better than any other camera in any specific domain, but it is good to very good in nearly every aspect of a camera. It would have been very nice to see it on one of your chart/scene to be able to compare it with the other cameras.

If you want to see just how little even the current king-of-the-hill can guarantee a "film look" you should beg, borrow or steal Dario Argento's Dracula 3D. Whatever you do don't pay money though. It's one of the most atrocious looking films I've ever seen. I couldn't believe the credits and all the digital post firms that lay their hands on this turd. The credit list went on like you'd just witnessed a big budget Hollywood picture. Besides the effects, which make The Asylum films for SyFy look like ILM blockbusters, the cinematography and grading were often lower than pornography levels. Like early '90s, shot on BetaCam stuff. I don't understand how this could come from the same filmmaker as Deep Red, Suspiria and Phenomena. I mean, content aside, he made beautiful films that had a singular dreamlike quality to them. It was clear that at some point in the digital pipeline someone or several someones had no idea what they were doing and it was all just ruined, even though what was done on set wasn't good. All of the lighting was hard and sourcy, like they were using small cheap units too close to talent in several instances. You had weird cases of blown out faces in a nighttime exterior, etc., etc. Perhaps the DP was intimidated by a digital camera and either failed to light for film or lit in a way that they used to take for granted would look better through the magic of film. It also appeared that there was a botched log-to-lin conversion prior to grading, which might have been done in a heavy-handed, non-color managed 8bit pipeline. Oh yeah, the film was shot on an Arri Alexa to ArriRaw. When I looked up what camera could have possibly rendered such an amazingly horrible looking motion picture I was literally stunned. I really don't understand how this is even possible to do on purpose much less through possibly compounded gross incompetence by multiple crew members and post vendors. It's just baffling.

i'm holding out for the 4k baby mode

Andrew has aimed a lot of negative comments directly at nikon which apply to nearly every camera maker out there. I agree that 4K is the future, and panny seems to be leading the way, but to hammer nikon seems a bit inappropriate. I own a D5300 and chose it specifiCally for its balance of ability to shoot both high quality stills and 1080p video without moire and aliasing. I looked at many cameras from the nikon D800 and D610, canon 6D, and panny GM1 and GH3 to sony nex7 and was unable to find a better all-around solution. Perhaps if Andrew approached his review a bit less video-centric and recognized that many pros require a camera that can do both stills and video to acceptable stock photo standards, he might realize the humble little D5300 is, right now, about the best balance available on the market. That said, I appreciate Andrew's website, insights, and all the work he does helping the video community.

Hell yah, Just wear it like a punk ear ring or nose ring :P & if you're adventurous maybe a Prince Albert :blink:

Great stills, indeed. It has a superb sensor for that.   But taken purely from the perspective of video, it's all very 2010.   The $799 doesn't really excuse it from being so low on innovation either. For this you can almost get a Pocket Cinema Camera and a much more cinematic image. Or you can get a more video optimised mirrorless camera with more features.   The D5300 does not even enable me to properly mask off the LCD to 16:9, that's how little thought Nikon have put into it for video.   OK say you have $1999 to spend in total. If you're not too serious about video you might be happy enough spending $799 on the Nikon and spend the rest on lenses. But in light of the upcoming GH4 it makes no sense to invest in the D5300. I understand well that $799 might be the budget and nothing more. In that case, get the older D5200 for $400 and spend the rest on a lens.

A product's price is SOLELY determined by what consumers are willing to pay. Manufacturing costs condition wether that product is actually viable or not in the market. Pricing is really subjective, it is a "notion" consumers have based on personal beliefs and preferences... that's why Blackmagic may be seen by other manufacturers as destructive, not disruptive. Not long ago, a 35mm film camera with extras could go up to 300.000$. A Betacam could be bought for 30.000$ to 60.000$. Now cinema & broadcast gear seem to have dropped a zero... Our "notion" and subjective idea of what their price should be changed the minute we could have a 5D MKII or 7D -which we though was really cheap-. BM is no real rival for Canon or Sony because they will sell thousands of units, not millions, and their lineup is pretty limted and "niche", but it has had an effect on how we see Canon prices now... Probably the manufacturing cost of a DSLR is lower than we think -like 100$- but if Canon, Sony or Nikon decide to gon the BM way with prices, they may actually change the whole concept of "how much it should cost" and hurt their future business...

Looking at this footage there is no denying the image is sharp, and the flares are also there - I'd like it if my iscorama gave a blue flare of this hue, but maybe not as prominent. I believe this video brings up a valuable factor IMO - that it is key for users of this anamorphic to find a suitable match in terms of taking lens selection - some of the shots bring to me a feeling of disconnection between the taking lens and the anamorphic - from certain shots it's quite obvious it is 2 separate optical designs working together but not fully in unison as you feel with a cinema anamorphic lens. It's hard to express in words. But a few minutes into a test i did with Hans_Punk's lomo square front it is illustrated here:- I'd like to see the slr magic lens in partnership with various semi modern primes such as contax zeiss, Olympus OM zuikos, and later FD / Nikon lenses. I think something like a helios 44 might be a bit too vintage to marry well with this anamorphic, whereas something like a 1980's cutting edge slr lens might have a better time amalgamating with the slr magic. I also felt the Sony A7 footage though less detailed, had a lot more of a aesthetically pleasing feel to the imagery - probaby because I'm a whore for the Full frame look and it's rare to see anything less than an iscorama delivering in the sharpness stakes on full frame. Please Please Please someone test the slr magic on an oval FF58. A year ago when i was testing a Century with oval ff58 prototype it automatically made it feel like a real anamorphic. I think the SLR magic will create better results.