nikon d5200?

[jagnje]

I can get a great deal on a new d5200 with the 18-105 lens. I was gonna get the d5300...is there much diference? I`ll be using it with an atomos ninja2/blade.

The only reason that I haven`t already bought it was the lenses...I hate the reverse focusing, but I`ll live with it for the work that I do right now.

But for everything else I`ll be needing new lenses(those that I have now are won`t fit). So what non nikon primes are available besides samyang? Or should I just get a reverse gear follow focus...just got a new non reversilble :/

[Cinegain]

With the D5300 they lost the low pass filter, making it a tad bit more detailed/sharper I'd reckon. Believe processing got a little boost, so a little better noise control. Other than that, don't believe there's much to it. If I remember correctly the Nikon hack community has hacked the D5200 for better bitrate and so, but not the D5300?

- Oh, the D5300 did get that 50/60p.

[Inazuma]

The d5200 had a lot of banding when you raised the shadows. As far as i know the d5300 doesnt have this issue

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I owned the entire series, D5100, then D5200 then D5300 and planning on updating for the D5500. I can tell you with no doubt, get the D5300 over the D5200. The leaps Nikon have been making with each generation are HUGE.

 

-D5100 had a GREAT image, very unique colours, but it lacked manual exposure control over video mode, which disqualified it for use against the then 600D rival. The 600D was a much better video shooter especially having manual control. The D5100 suffered from aliasing/moire too. I loved it though and shot it very long and preferred it over the 600D back then even when everyone thought I was nuts using a globally hated auto-exposure only camera while having a 600D, but I just locked exposure and loved the images much more than the 600D so used it more. 

 

 

-D5200, improved massively, it leaped all Canon cameras and reached 5D MKIII video quality level (finally removed aliasing/moire by removing line skipping and doing pixel binning, something Canon just offered in their 7DII in 2015!) The new Toshiba sensor produced a lovely image without any moire/aliasing plus it added manual exposure control in video mode and better high ISO performance and a clean HDMI output for recording (which doesn't carry audio, and only available at 30p, this is very important for you to know as you say you'll use a Ninja)

 

 

-D5300, even a higher upgrade. The sensors have the same pixel count but it's new, actually designed and manufactured by Nikon Semi-conductors unlike the Outsourced Toshiba one on the D5200. The sensor also has a different stack layer and missing the OLPF. On a practical level, the sensor improved the already great video quality in a huge way, it improved detail (the D5200 was Canon 600D/5D level, bit muddy and the D5300 jumps a bit more towards full 1080p), at least a stop improvement of high ISO performance, it removed the shadow banding issue that was seen in D5200 videos with dark areas when grading (completely removed) which in it self upgraded lowlight performance and DR in grading, and it still does pixel binning with no moire/aliasing. It also added 60p 1080p whoch was limited to 720p on the D5200. Other Major improvements other than video quality is the bigger and higher clarity LCD, it's just much better for video and very large, and focus assist and general seeing is much better. The HDMI output made a significant leap as it carries audio (recording the audio to the ProRes file on the Ninja) and you can choose frame rates of 23,97, 25p, 30p, and actually even 60p, (While the D5200 only output a clean 30p signal without audio). The video images are just better and probably due to the better processor in sharpening, noise reduction, etc.

 The camera also adds Wifi function which is very cool to instantly share photos. Just a significant improvement for video professionals while not so much for stills shooters. 

 

 

-D5500, I still don't know. But seeing how Nikon has pushed video quality on each generation I'd expect the D5500 to be a secret gem. On the spec side it has a new LOG mode (Nikon Flat PP) so wider DR and it had a touchscreen. No idea how better it is in terms of image and functionality. I hope I find out and share soon. No one still has for some reason (Andrew? You've been a D5x00 advocate so maybe you should see if the D5500 caries a secret as the others did before it! It might have a significant lowlight push, a very high C100 level 1080p detail, significant DR improvement from LOG, maybe)

 

So anyhow get the D5300 and don't even consider the D5200 (especially since you'll be using a ninja and the 30p only, no audio HDMI output is a deal breaker for you) And if budget is really tight, the D3300 has the D5300 improvements but lacks the articulating big LCD. Has the D5300 image and 60p and HDMI out though. I highly believe the D5300 extra money is 100% worth it as the D5x00 body is just much better. Even my D5100 is a much better body to use than the horridly small and plastiky D3300, I hate that D3X00 body for some reason. Very cheap. Ergonomics are horrible with the focus magn. button on the left side which is actually a deal breaker for me. Even the articulating LCD alone is worth the extra money over the D3300 especially for video. 

 

 

Lenses, (BTW Sigma, Tokina, Tamron, Samyang, Zeiss and all third party Nikon F-mount lenses have a reversed focus direction too. Perhaps there are rare exceptions but not many. If you're going to shoot Nikon you'll probably have to use Nikon focus direction)

I use Canon and Nikon and don't find it much of an issue the focus rotation is reversed, just for a moment at the beginning of each switch but then it's programmed into my mind in minutes. I'd hope you accept it and use it since there are so many cheap and ultra high quality native Nikkor glass for the D5300, a selection unparalled by any other manufacturer due the the long endless production of manual lenses for decades that are perfect for video use and they all fit the newest cameras (Nikon cameras and pretty much all cameras put there with adapters, nikon lenses work on ANY thing with cheap adapters so a future-proof investment)

 I highly suggest you get the D5300 + kit lens for now and see if you can work with the focus direction (I believe you will), also get the 100$ 50mm 1.8D with the package too if you can. You will very likely find you cover everything with these simple two ultra cheap lenses, one as a wide and for image stabilization and a close-up 50mm for lowlight/portrait/beauty shots/interviews/shallow DOF shots.

If you find you can work with the focus direction, then go nuts with all the manual nikkor glass out there and fill the gaps these two lenses you have don't cover (super tele, macro, etc)

[Mattias Burling]

I can say after owning a Nikon for one week. The focus direction isn't a big deal. Your brain is clever enough to deal with it. To be fare we have many Nikons at work which I use from time to time. But that's for stills and in AF. I got used to the direction pretty much instantly. I guess it's no different than switching to my K3 that has a focus leaver. 

The wrong direction when putting it in the mount on the other hand.... that's a different story. 33 years of "righty tighty" isn't going away that easy.

Only downside to Nikon imo is the lack of cheap vintage lenses. I can get super sharp and fast primes for Canon at $10 a pop. Not so much for Nikon. On the flip side my Nikon glass goes on any other camera I come across.

[jagnje]

Nikon mount tokinas are reverse focus as well??? That make very little sense...are you sure? I know that tamron uses nikon rotation for the most part, but others as well? The tokina 28-70 2.8 is my favorite lens, I have it in pentax mount and I wanted to get one in nikon mount as well. Anyway...I do eng work every day, and work on many projects as a focus puller...I kinda don't want to get used working the reverse way as it may interfeer my paying jobs. 

The 60p is a must also 25p hdmi, so the d5200 is out, but thank you for reminding me about the d3300. At this point I'm practicaly buying the camera just for the sensor. I have it on a rig most of the time so ergonomics are not that impostant to me.

Any yes, the thing I will miss the most about letting go my 550d is cheap lenses...oh well. 

I really wanted to like the a6000 just because it opens up a whole new world of lenses, but theres just something off about the picture it produces, and there is just something right about nikon.

[Mattias Burling]

I kinda don't want to get used working the reverse way as it may interfeer my paying jobs. 

I would be very surprised if it did. The brain is much more clever than that. You can switch back and forth as you choose. It's like knowing both how to ride a bike and roller skate. We are capable of more skills than one.

[Inazuma]

-D5500, I still don't know. But seeing how Nikon has pushed video quality on each generation I'd expect the D5500 to be a secret gem. On the spec side it has a new LOG mode (Nikon Flat PP) so wider DR and it had a touchscreen. No idea how better it is in terms of image and functionality. I hope I find out and share soon. No one still has for some reason (Andrew? You've been a D5x00 advocate so maybe you should see if the D5500 caries a secret as the others did before it! It might have a significant lowlight push, a very high C100 level 1080p detail, significant DR improvement from LOG, maybe)

Great post Ebrahim as usual. Very detailed. But as an owner of the D5500 I will say your expectations are a little overblown. The detail level is much the same as the D5200 (and probably the D5300), ie. not close to 1080p of Panasonic cameras. It's also noisier and the DR is not much different. What I do love about this camera though is the extremely natural rendering of colour and tonality in the Flat profile. It's also just a nice camera to hold and use. 

I actually have a C100 MKii coming soon (my first "proper" camera purchase).  When I have time I would like to do a comparison between it and the other cameras I have. Should be interesting for fellow gear geeks

[jagnje]

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?326092-Nikon-D3300-D5300-HDMI-PAL-Output

is this 100%?

[mercer]

This is probably a dumb question, but I am pretty ignorant when it comes to external recorders...

If I were to use a D5500 with the Ninja, can you still utilize the flat profile of the D5500, or is every camera setting bypassed by the Ninja?

Also, how is the audio recording in the Ninja, is it usable at all?

[jagnje]

You can use any profile you want and thats how it is recorded to the external recorder. Prores ussualy turns out a bit flater from my experience. 

Audio is pretty basic but better than all of the dslr I have tried.

[mercer]

There is something special about the colors coming out of this camera... That I have seen.

I have an eos-m, which I still love, an a5100, which I thought was amazing when I bought it, but like you said about the a6000, there is just something not right about it, and an nx500, which I have a love/hate relationship with. The 4K is amazing, but the colors are strange. It will probably be my black and white camera, which looks awesome.

I am selling off a lot of lenses and equipment and I would like to get either a BMPCC or a D5500, with a Ninja... Obviously for different reasons. I am leaning towards the latter because of the flexibility of its hybrid options and I have a good set of manual, non ai primes that I paid next to nothing for.

Of course I have some cool, vintage c-mount lenses that would go great with the BMPCC as well... Too many options.

Anyway...

Thanks for your help!

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Great post Ebrahim as usual. Very detailed. But as an owner of the D5500 I will say your expectations are a little overblown. The detail level is much the same as the D5200 (and probably the D5300), ie. not close to 1080p of Panasonic cameras. It's also noisier and the DR is not much different. What I do love about this camera though is the extremely natural rendering of colour and tonality in the Flat profile. It's also just a nice camera to hold and use. 

I actually have a C100 MKii coming soon (my first "proper" camera purchase).  When I have time I would like to do a comparison between it and the other cameras I have. Should be interesting for fellow gear geeks

You're the first D5500 owner here so if I may ask a few FLAT JPEG grabs to see how it looks. That would be great. 

And could you take a look if there are any menu settings for the HDMI output frame rate? 

On the Nikon site and many Official specs it's mentioned the D5300 & D5500 output 24p, 30p, and 60p while the D5200 only 30p. But I am having trouble actually outputting anything other than 30p from my D5300 to the Atomos Ninja Blade, 30p  and Interlaced 50i. 

I've been shooting a lot of 30p lately with the Ninja Blade + D5300 and absolutely loving the combo and image quality, obviously without noticing it is 30p, as I the camera internal recording is set to 24p and the specs confirm it. I thought motion looked weird vs my regular 30p but just dismissed it as maybe codec difference. And my NLE (Vegas) is set to 24p so whatever file you import is directly conformed to 24p so I didn't notice, Pretty dumb of me. 

I have the D7100 here for stills and it's also the same. 30p goes to the blade no matter what frame rate I set the camera to, 

This is what I hate about Nikon vs Canon. Nikon does have more features, but when Canon does the feature, it's complete.

Their first clean HDMI implementation om the 7DII is heaven. You have a complete menu for the HDMI output. You have the choice of ANY frame rate and resolution. You can trigger ''any'' external recorder and record internally at the same time. You have a ''mirroring'' mode which outputs a clean HDMI output to the Blade that's completely unaffected by any button/menu changes you perform on the camera's LCD (The nikons show anything you do on the output), it outputs high quality audio through the signal (vs no audio on d5200 and much better quality audio than D5300 including manual control whilst recording and a headphone jack, the quality on the D5300 is unbearable with a hideous hiss) It just works as clean HDMI recording should work. From my short experience the 7DII image is almost identical in image to the D5300 ( but with much better lowlight, but it seems so wasteful to pay for a full fledged sports/wildlife tank SLR with 10fps, huge OVF and 65point AF system just to use it for liveview video mode. Not gonna happen by me. 

Canon sadly haven't implemented clean HDMI on their newest rebels too (T6s/i), but to be honest vs the D5200/D5300 half-assed modes it's not much of a loss, They're a bit sharper than D5300 but have a touch of moire on the finest of lines, not D5300/5DIII/7DII moire/aliasing blocking level. 

 

There is something special about the colors coming out of this camera... 

It's true. No matter what hype or specs say, sony and Samsung don't touch the Nikon colours, and even Canon colours are a bit behind. The Nikon clean image and colours is very, very special for shooting people for some reason. Can't get the same look from any other camera including the GH4 and a7s which are just sharper. 

[mercer]

You're the first D5500 owner here so if I may ask a few FLAT JPEG grabs to see how it looks. That would be great. 

And could you take a look if there are any menu settings for the HDMI output frame rate? 

On the Nikon site and many Official specs it's mentioned the D5300 & D5500 output 24p, 30p, and 60p while the D5200 only 30p. But I am having trouble actually outputting anything other than 30p from my D5300 to the Atomos Ninja Blade, 30p  and Interlaced 50i. 

I've been shooting a lot of 30p lately with the Ninja Blade + D5300 and absolutely loving the combo and image quality, obviously without noticing it is 30p, as I the camera internal recording is set to 24p and the specs confirm it. I thought motion looked weird vs my regular 30p but just dismissed it as maybe codec difference. And my NLE (Vegas) is set to 24p so whatever file you import is directly conformed to 24p so I didn't notice, Pretty dumb of me. 

I have the D7100 here for stills and it's also the same. 30p goes to the blade no matter what frame rate I set the camera to, 

This is what I hate about Nikon vs Canon. Nikon does have more features, but when Canon does the feature, it's complete.

Their first clean HDMI implementation om the 7DII is heaven. You have a complete menu for the HDMI output. You have the choice of ANY frame rate and resolution. You can trigger ''any'' external recorder and record internally at the same time. You have a ''mirroring'' mode which outputs a clean HDMI output to the Blade that's completely unaffected by any button/menu changes you perform on the camera's LCD (The nikons show anything you do on the output), it outputs high quality audio through the signal (vs no audio on d5200 and much better quality audio than D5300 including manual control whilst recording and a headphone jack, the quality on the D5300 is unbearable with a hideous hiss) It just works as clean HDMI recording should work. From my short experience the 7DII image is almost identical in image to the D5300 ( but with much better lowlight, but it seems so wasteful to pay for a full fledged sports/wildlife tank SLR with 10fps, huge OVF and 65point AF system just to use it for liveview video mode. Not gonna happen by me. 

Canon sadly haven't implemented clean HDMI on their newest rebels too (T6s/i), but to be honest vs the D5200/D5300 half-assed modes it's not much of a loss, They're a bit sharper than D5300 but have a touch of moire on the finest of lines, not D5300/5DIII/7DII moire/aliasing blocking level. 

 

It's true. No matter what hype or specs say, sony and Samsung don't touch the Nikon colours, and even Canon colours are a bit behind. The Nikon clean image and colours is very, very special for shooting people for some reason. Can't get the same look from any other camera including the GH4 and a7s which are just sharper. 

Ebrahim, do you know what the dynamic range of the D5500 would be if using the Ninja 2? 

[Inazuma]

...

No menu options for framerate over HDMI. What I did notice was that when the camera's recording was set to 1080p 50, my monitor would have to restart whenever I pressed record. I found a way around this was to switch the HDMI output to 720p. Not sure what this means.

A few framegrabs attached.

BTW one thing I have noticed also is that the autowhitebalance on the d5500 liveview is exceptionally accurate even under unusual lighting circumstances. It's a shame that you can't lock it. And also you can't pick a particular temperature; you can only preset using an image. 

Also in regards to colour etc. I shoot this cam alongside a Panasonic GX7 and although the Nikon does give perfect colours I would not say that the Panasonic lags behind by much. It just gives a different look. More gritty. 

[Nikkor]

Maybe the AE lock button also locks wb, just a thought.

[jagnje]

ok, I have read just about everything there is to read about nikon HDMI out and nowhere online I have found anything where nikon would state the framerate out of the hdmi. I just say clean HDMI and nobody seems to be getting 24/25p to a ninja. This is a bummer...I could live without a ninja, just record to the card, but getting by without live zebras/histogram...dunno. It`s what I use 99% of the time on my 550d and ML.

[Inazuma]

ok, I have read just about everything there is to read about nikon HDMI out and nowhere online I have found anything where nikon would state the framerate out of the hdmi. I just say clean HDMI and nobody seems to be getting 24/25p to a ninja. This is a bummer...I could live without a ninja, just record to the card, but getting by without live zebras/histogram...dunno. It`s what I use 99% of the time on my 550d and ML.

you can still get that stuff

[Mattias Burling]

ok, I have read just about everything there is to read about nikon HDMI out and nowhere online I have found anything where nikon would state the framerate out of the hdmi. I just say clean HDMI and nobody seems to be getting 24/25p to a ninja. This is a bummer...I could live without a ninja, just record to the card, but getting by without live zebras/histogram...dunno. It`s what I use 99% of the time on my 550d and ML.

The d5500 doesn't have Zebra and Histogram in live view?

[jagnje]

not that I know of