The British Virgin Islands HD "Voyage BVI" - Nikon D800

[redswept]

We just finished a week in the BVI shooting with a Nikon D800, check out the video below. For the lenses we used the Nikkor 24mm/1.4 and 85mm/1.8 primes, so it was helpful with the D800's ability to record in both FX and DX format. For stabilization we used a Glidecam HD2000. The underwater shots were taken with a GoPro and RX100 (which unfortunately got fried due to a leaky underwater housing).

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2HXlcgfwKc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2HXlcgfwKc[/url]

Anyways, hope you enjoy watching the video as much as we did making it. Leave a comment, thanks!

[Jon de Zwaan]

Great stuff! Love the glidecam shots, you really mastered it. Sorry 'bout your rx100 though.

[Axel]

Very nice. I love the snorkel shots especially. Better than flying. Best wishes.

[galenb]

Wow, the glidecam shots looked like regular steadycam shots! Very nice! So, how was it shooting with the D800? Did you have any issues with aliasing and moire? Or was that not an issue? Any post tips for using it?

[quote] [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Anyways, hope you enjoy watching the video as much as we did making it. Leave a comment, thanks! [/quote] [/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]LOL! Yeah I bet you did! It's pouring down rain as I type this...[/font][/color]

[redswept]

lol, I was in the BVI during "hurricane season" as well (just last week!), but managed to avoid most rain. The clouds seemed to gather around large land masses like Tortola & Virgin Gorda, so it was nice watching the lightning from the smaller islands.

The D800 is awesome to shoot with. The picture quality is subjective, but I do find myself surprised by its dynamic range capturing shadows and highlights. The ergonomics are an improvement over the Nikon D700 and Canon 5Dii (in my opinion), with dedicated live-view buttons and quick access to almost all the features I need (switching auto-ISO on and off, adjusting aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, manual white balance). The milky way shot was done with the built-in intervalometer, which works awesome - with Canons, you'd need a separate accessory... On the negative side, I did notice some rainbow aliasing in the waves but I'm not much of a pixel-peeper. The one awesome feature of the D800 is the optional DX video crop mode, which effectively doubles all of my lenses. I carry primes (24mm f/1.4G and 85mm f/1.8G), so it really helps me save space, weight, and money. In post, I found the DX crops appear to have slightly degraded image quality, but it could be my imagination (and either way, getting a shot is better than no shot). I'd definitely recommend a polarizer to help with glare in tropical locations.

[galenb]

Interesting. Coincidentally I was just reading a blog earlier today about a guy who switched from Canon to Nikon. He listed off a bunch of reasons and one of them was dynamic range. He felt it was much better then Canon in general. I love to shoot with the shadows falling toward the camera and that's one of those situations where wide dynamic range really helps you to be able to pull detail out of the shadowed areas like face and still see the background.