gethin

I wrote to Nikon about this when I got the z6 however long ago that was. Their answer: you’re holding it wrong

ISO sensitivity mentions minimum exposure in the stills version only as far as I can see. I got all excited for a mo. I think the issue is that when I bring this up - the essential problem of Nikon allowing you to shoot at 1/25 when shooting 25fps, the answer I most often get is more like apples “you’re holding it wrong”. People seem bamboozled that it’s an issue but it shouldn’t be there to be an issue. It’s a rooky amateurish policy to have. My workaround is to shoot at 30p which has a minimum shutter of 50fps (it’s not even consistent!) which is close enough to 180 to be passable. Not great but it allows my to get those shots which have 6+ stops of exposure variation

I shoot on a gimbal, variable nds are not an option. Shit even my 7d had a better way of dealing with this. yes Andrew you’re right it’s a lack of setting minimum shutter speed and Nikons dumb policy of allowing 360 degree shutter angle as the max in the auto modes, but shutter angle should have been the easy fix to this.

Let’s say I’m shooting an interior and transition to exterior. I want to shoot the interior at the lowest iso possible. I shoot h.265 with active d light on max at the lowest isos possible. I find I get the lowest noise and best dynamic range this way, better than nlog. If I move to a brighter environment the image will be overexposed. There is no lower iso to go to. If I expose for the exterior then the interior will be at ridiculously high isos. shooting in A it will happily ramp the shutter speed when it moves outside. It works better than ramping iso imho. It’s smoother, and in most situations you don’t see the change of shutter speed.

I’m in the middle of overreacting to Nikon implementing something on my camera that I was using on a competitors 8 years ago and they have stuffed it. I know this shouldn’t be bothering me as much as it is. I really need to get out more. Nikon: the Microsoft of cameras 🤦 The fact you can only use shutter angle in manual mode. Why? Or at least let us set the minimum shutter angle in those modes ffs. Because otherwise the camera will happily shoot unusable 360degree shutter angle video in those modes. (Please don’t post any variety of “real men only shoot manual”. For what I do shooting in aperture priority is essential. It lets me get shots that would be impossible unless I’d have another operator ramping exposure. I’m not shooting drama. It’s not controlled. I could do this on the gh5 ffs).

This popped into my head an hour or so ago. Was thinking they could add features specific to their cameras. Direct wifi video assist for example

thanks, that looks promising!

I probably would But there is a valid reason, you don't want to know. Suffice to say I dont have time to work out a new workflow right now. I've got too many other things going on. RIght now I need a bodge that will see me through to a time where googling "how to do colour space transforms in premiere pro" doesn't induce a panic attack.

I know this is a bit of a hack. I posted the question on reddit and only got one response telling me to transform both to rec-709 and start from there, but i dont want to 😄. I love my nikon workflow, it gloriously bodgy but works. So are there any luts for C-log 3 that will at least get me part of the way there? The canon ones I'm using currently are way off

i dont know if this makes any sense but the z6 and z6ii have a nice fat image. I find the z8 thin. Maybe from my chemical photography days. You could punch through an overexposed fat neg, but had to work harder with a thin one. I often stumble on stuff I shot on the z6 and think "gee that's nice". With the z8 I can get a great image, but i've found I get the best results shooting non log flat mode with the dynamic range boost cranked at the lowest iso possible. And then I'll still often need to denoise a bit.

yep I was thinking of what's on the horizon and including the blackmagic cameras. But yes I'll for sure wait for real world video dynamic range testing before making a final decision (although with the range being limited for stills, It's still not a great fit for me).

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Nikon Z 6III I was assuming the 24mp sensor would give me better video dynamic range than the z8 (and maybe nicer hightlight rolloff), but this isn't too promising. Really am starting to think about moving to L-mount. Have a much greater range of cameras to choose from

Not an option for me. I mostly shoot real estate or low budget stuff in rural australia. It's generally not possible to rent, or it makes no financial sense to. But yeah of course if I was doing long form anything, or anything with any sort of budget I'd be renting. I used to live in london. Lee lighting would let you try things, they were fantastic with students. (despite loaning out some dodgy AF gear now and then. Cigarrette foil and the fuse - that kind of stuff 😆

they are pretty cheap too. Since writing I've been poking around and the cheapest I can find are a the nicefoto 600w for A$1400 or the smallrig 450 for $1600. Both a bit more than I was hoping to spend but is anything ever under budget lol

thats great!

I'll do a yt search. In theory 600w led would be at a stop or two higher than I have now, which might be ok.

I just saw these on AliExpress. The specs sound like they're similar output to my 150s. Hard to tell though because some specs are given with reflector some without. Seem like good value hey

Back in the day I did a few shoots with 5 and 10k hmi's that you could blast through a window and would compete with daylight. I don't really use lighting much anymore and I'm very out of the loop. I have a couple of cheap and cheerful godox 150w leds. Is there anything current that has higher output that is $1000 USD and below? I've seen a few diy things that look absurdly bright but no idea what the output actually is. They don't need to run for hours on end either.

I shot my last vid in 8bit h.265 flat with active dlight cranked to the max, and I honestly think I got a better result than I've been getting with 10 but nlog. Just looking at the histogram nlog was leaving big bands of nothing at either end so those extra 2 bits were probably going to waste. 8 bit was using the full histogram, and I think has some inbuilt noise reduction which saved me a bunch of time in post. There were a couple of shots that I ettr'd a bit too much, but they were just about salvageable. The post was so much quicker. I could chuck on all my presets from my z6, and the h.265 fell apart less. But it leaves me wondering why I spent $7.5k on a new camera 🤔 They need to have optional noise reduction and dlight available on 10bit footage. Nlog is garbage. I've not bothered with nraw yet. Mostly shoot in 4k at 25,30,50,60 and a few 8k30 shots

well after a day of cutting z8 and mavic 3 footage, I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing. I stumbled on some phantom 4 pro stuff I shot a few year ago and honestly its less noisy, has better highlight rolloff, but most of all it was quicker: That's the thing I'm increasingly thinking. Maybe I can improve on what I was doing 3 years ago, but only a bit, if at all, and at what time cost? If I have to denoise every shot, and mask windows to try to squeak some highlights in from outside, for a marginal improvement in a sector where I'm competing with people charging $200 and shooting on an iphone. I've seen some of the HDR iphone footage and its pretty amazing.

Yes but the z8 flat isn't as flat as the z6 😭. The z6 flat is fantastic, and I swear there is more dynamic range than in raw (maybe the active dlight helps there?) Im still finding the highlight rolloff on the z8 much worse than the z6. I'll keep plugging away at it, but at the moment I'm hoping the z6iii has more to offer. I saw some real estate stuff shot on an iPhone and honestly I though it looked better than my z8 stuff. They are obviously doing some computational magic to bring down the window exposures and stop harsh highlights. But makes me wonder why I've spent so much to get worse footage, that takes me longer to edit. Sigh. This is just for what I shoot. Most.people won't be running into these issues. If I was a wedding or event shooter I'd love it. Would I should drama on it? Nopety nope

Aha thanks I just saw your earlier post too. I'll check them out

I just shot my first couple of things in nlog. Can anyone point me to alternative luts I can check out? The nikon lut is contrasty, and the skies are a bit fluro-turquoise. I've just had a go at grading it myself without the lut and I need something in-between mine and the nikon one. I'm in premiere for now. I've tried turning down the intensity and tweaking the HUE/HUE controls in premiere but its a bit limited.

I bit the bullet and bought a z8. I've done a bit of testing and couple of shoots. First impressions are not great. I need to do some more scientific testing this weekend, but the highlight rolloff and lack of dynamic range make the 10 bit h.265 look worse than my 8bit z6ii. I was keen to get the raw video for those times where I wanted the best possible quality, but kinda hoping and expecting (from the general comments/videos/raving I've seen) that the h.265 would be a step up from the z6. The stills dynamic range isn't quite up to my 11 year old d800 either. And today I found the autofocus hunting a bit in low light. Seeing as my bread and butter shooting involves low light and very high contrast I'm not sure it's the right fit for me so far. I've tried ramping up the d-lighting but meh. Anyone know if the highlight rolloff improves with pro res? I really don't want to shoot raw for my little shoots - $7K AUD to make my life harder 🤦 I really love high dynamic range stills cameras, I don't think there's one hybrid camera in sony's line up that is a good fit either. It's kinda depressing knowing that I could increase the quality of my output by shooting stills consistently with that 11 year old beastie.

The sensor in the z9 is designed for speed. I've found Nikon flagship D4/5 cameras lacking in dynamic range. It was the first thing I googled when it came out: what the video dynamic range was like, and from everything I could find it wasn't great. And yep the odd video sample with gnarly highlight rolloff. Say that itqs dynamic range is limited in a Nikon group and people go slightly nuts 😆. I'm a Nikon shooter, im used to waiting: so I'm waiting for the z6iii or z8, and Nikon hopefully getting back to the 14 stops of the d8xx's