Canons vs. Nikons Video DSLRs- the entire line up.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

As Canon was the first to introduce the DSLR video option to the masses and everyone of us probably owned one, we love the colours, the feel and aesthetic of the image, and we also got used the ergonomics, it's become second nature for us to use Canon DSLRs that everything else seem like a compromise by comparison, at least for me. So it's useful to summarize how Canon DSLRs stand now with their latest generation compared to their main DSLR maker. I was at my friend's camera store last night and we spend the entire night comparing Canon DSLRs to Nikons, just for video mode. So here are the findings.

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1- Canon 1200D vs. Nikon D3300

D3300 has slightly higher resolution.
D3300 has significantly less aliasing and moire
D3300 has about a stop advantage in low-light performance
D3300 has 60p in 1080p, quality similar to 30p mode
D3300 has clean HDMI output with embedded audio
D3300 had a better screen (900k vs. 400k)

they both have similar rolling shutter, similar audio, similar colour performance (although I personally prefer the magical Nikon's). The Canon has the advantage of live-view being able to adjust iris, and the focus assist zoom is much better.

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2- Canon 700D vs. Nikon D5300

D5300 has slightly higher resolution
D5300 has significantly less moire and aliasing
D5300 has about a stop advantage in low light
D5300 has 60p in 1080p, similar to 30p in quality.
D5300 has clean HDMI output.
D5300 has a better, larger screen.

Rolling shutter is marginally better on the Canon, ability to adjust iris in live-view, and also the live view zoom assist is better. Similar colour performance and audio quality.

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3- Canon 70D vs. Nikon D7100

D7100 has slightly higher resolution
D7100 has significantly lower aliasing and moire
D7100 has a clean HDMI output
D7100 has a 1.3x crop mode (horrible but adequate for closeups)
70D has a lovely autofocus system, magical to say at least, you touch the subject and it goes there, silently, fluidly and organically, it looks better than most focus pullers. It's accurate, organic, and tracks what you touch.
70D has an articulated screen.
70D has a better live-view implementation of zoom and iris.
70D has higher bitrate of 90mbps ALL I vs 24 mbps AVCHD
70D is just nicer to use!

Both have similar rolling shutter, audio performance,

Note: the 70D aliasing makes it unsuitable for serious video production.

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4- Canon 7D mk II vs. Nikon D7100

-D7100 has slightly better resolution. But strangely, the 7D image can be sharpened to show effectively higher resolution (actual detail) than the sharpened D7100 image, which doesn't respond as well to sharpening.
-7D has about a stop low-light advantage
-7D has 60p at 1080p, similar quality, D7100 doesn't
-7D has an all I 90mbits codec vs long gop 24mbits on the Nikon
-7D has clean HDMI output with embedded audio and timecode for triggering. the Nikon (drops to 720p when recording internally), only outputs 30p while the Canon allows selecting 24p and 30p. The Canon screen can stay open whilst outputting the clean signal, and it comes with an HDMI locking protector. It's over-ally a much better implementation.
-7D is the first Canon I've seen allowing a native 24p capture mode, not 23.97.
-7D is the first Canon I've seen allowing MP4 and MOV capture.
-7D is the first Canon I've seen with a built-in timelapse mode (in the D7100) but the 7D implementation is better and it has a surprisingly good HDR timelapse recording function where it combines up to 4 exposures to creat each frame.
-7D has a marvelous Autofocus system in video mode, an the ability to rack focus with the silent joystick is surprisingly intuitive. It's a very good feature.
-The 7D has better audio, has a headphone jack for monitoring and the ability to adjust sound level silently with the touch pad whilst recording.

Both have similar screens, similar aliasing performance, similar rolling shutter, and also the Canon has a better implementation for adjusting iris and live-view zoom assist Both have great colours.

-Note: I was pleasingly surprised with the 7D, especially after the Nikons beat the Canon on the previous rounds. The 7D is just a nice s35 camera to use. It's more expensive though in Nikon's defense, and is more comparable to a D300 successor than a D7100)

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5- Canon 6D vs Nikon D610

-D610 has slightly higher resolution. 6D image can't be sharpened.
-D610 has clean HDMI ouput
-D610 has s35 crop mode
-D610 has a headphone jack for monitoring audio
-6D has around a stop advantage in lowlight (it's a very, very, very clean high ISO camera, better than the 5D)
-6D has a higher ALL I 90mbits vs 24mbits avchd
-6D has the liveview zoom and iris advantage.

Note: both have horrible aliasing and moire, which alone makes both unsuitable for serious video production.

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6- Canon 6D/5D mk II vs. Nikon D750

The D750 hasn't arrived yet so sadly was unable to check it out. It seems like the best Nikon for video and perhaps the best DSLR for video but still haven't tried it.

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7- Canon 5D mk III vs. Nikon D810

D810 has higher resolution - also the Canon can be sharpened to slightly match it and looks natural for some reason while sharpening the Nikon results in a digitally artificial image with artefacts, but un-sharpened it's still better than the sharpened 5D. it's closer to the 5D raw.
D810 has a s35 crop mode (quality takes a big hit but suitable for close-ups)
D810 has 60p in 1080p (the 5D 720p 60p is clean though with no aliasing or moire and adequately detailed)
D810 has a log-like picture profile (though Canon offers Cinestyle)
D810 has Zebra pattern for exposure
5D has about half a stop advantage in low-light performance
5D has a better implementation of clean HDMI output (see 7D vs d7100)
5D has the ability to silently change audio levels whilst recording with a touch-pad
5D has a better liveview implementation of zoom assist, although the D810 can change iris while in live-view (horay!)
5D has a very reliable path of recording 14bit CinemaDNG raw internally to CF card, with all the extra peaking/zebras/waveforms/ etc

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8- Canon 1Dx vs. Nikon D4s

1Dx has significantly higher resolution, and I mean significantly, the 1080p of the D4s looks a bit worse than the 720p on the 1Dx!
1Dx has a higher bitrate of ALL I 90mpbs vs 24mpbs AVCHD
1Dx has better live-view zoom implementation
D4s has clean HDMI output
D4s has a headphone jack for audio monitoring
(both above two points are in the 5D yet bizarrely not here)
D4s has a s35 crop (as horrible as the fullframe), and a s16 crop that looks stunning

both have identical low-light performance (which is strange as I thought the D4s would be better), rolling shutter is the same,

note: the 1Dx is identical to the 5D for video, same image, same options, but loses the clean HDMI output, and the headphone jack, and all the advantages of Magiclantern including raw internal recording. No reason to use neither these cameras for video.

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Note: if you're comfortable with magiclantern, add to the comparison above: Focus peaking, Zebras, Waveform monitor, on screen meters, crop markers, and a few other feature to all the Canons.

-in testing we used a landscape shot outside for all the cameras to test resolution, and the indoors for low-light performance, a chart for aliasing and moire, and we had a list of all the usability features to compare. The images were all exported to Sony Vegas 13 and viewed on a calibrated Eizo monitor. It's a pretty accurate real-life test.
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Just for fun we put a CF card in the 1DC and shot a landscape out the window, and put an SSD in an Epic Dragon and shot the same at 6K, I liked the 1Dc's image better. God I love that damn 4K Canon Log image So much that I quickly turned it off, stopped testing and left the building before my credit card makes any stupid 10$K decisions! :D

[Christina Ava]

very helpful topic Ebrahim, I am trying to decide what camera to buy next 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Thank you Christina. If you (or anybody) have any specific questions on how Canon and Nikon DSLRs work/compare I have tested all of them very percisely.

[cojocaru27]

hey, thx for the useful comparison test you've done so far. can you give more detail on the 5d mark3 vs d810 battle? i have heard that the d810 has a new and much better codec which can deliver images that can be compared to canon raw quality, is this true? if so, having the 1080p native 60p over the only 720p 60p and more space to play arround with the image (the raw workflow is not so good to handle) can push the d810 forward, or not? thank you for the answer in advance.

[Danyyyel]

Sorry but your assessment has a lot of flaw. I have thoroughly tested my  D7100 against my Canon 7D (Anybody would say all these Canon apsc sensor are about the same in resolution) and the D7100 is thoroughly sharper, just a little softer than Panasonic gh2. When you add an external recorder it is even sharper. The D7100 does not have 60fps in 1080p. I don't have a D810, but from what I have seen and downloaded if you see it less sharp than the 5dmark3 then I am baffled. I stop reading from there. If you could supply us with some example to show us your conclusion I would be happy to look at it, because from my experience and research as from the Nikon D5200, the Nikons thoroughly beat the Canon dslr line in terms of DR, low light, sharpness and no moire/aliasing etc.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Perhaps it was a mistake I stated the 5D "won'' the round because it's purely down to my needs and work. So I'll just remove all the "winning" remarks and leave the raw facts which I believe are quite accurate. Make your own conclusions.

Cojo: The 5D mk III raw shows the best detail, followed by the D810, followed by stock 5D sharpened. So the D810 wins on the resolution side over the 5D. In fact, all Nikons do over all Canons. The other 5D vs D810 points are listed above, from what I've seen during my extremely long half an hour experience with them! :)

The D810 showed the best image quality in the tests I've done with the Canon and Nikon entire DSLR lineups (except for the 1Dc), best detail straight off the card, best colour science, near the best ISO performance (1Dx and 5D win by a negligble difference - impressive considering the 36mp stills!), no aliasing or moire, If image quality is your main criteria then it's the best camera in all the tests above.

Danyl: my test above is done with the 7D mk II, a significantly better video camera than the original 7D.

And yes the D810 is better in resolution than the 5D mk III. Though I disagree with Dynamic range and low-light performance and aliasing, they are virtually identical in both these cameras. In fact, I didn't include dynamic range results because on every test Nikons showed identical DR results to the Canons, with even identical roll-off feel to the highlight when clipped. So from what I can see the dynamic range is not a real-life advantage in either these systems when graded. (some might show a bit flatter image but they turn out identical once graded).

I will try to source out the tests and organize them into a watchable post/video, but it's a beast of an amount of work. I will try.

-Note: the Nikons win in video in every category, D3300, D5300, D610, except for the 7D mk II vs. The D7100, and the 1Dx vs D4s. The 5D mk III vs D810 is a bit more complicated to give a winner mainly because of the strange raw situation.

[cojocaru27]

ebrahim, thank you so much for your answer. i found it very helpful ans if you will find time to post some videos it will be much appreciated. thx.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I was hoping someone with technical knowledge would chime in on why some cameras show a great ability to be sharpened by the sharpen mask in NLEs and some don't. For example the 5D mk III and 7D mk II. It's pretty strange. When you add the filter, the image comes to life, you can actually see more detail in fine objects and in the distance, I can almost swear it increases the actual resolution not just sharpness. While on the other cameras it just increases sharpness, and immediately results in a digital mess, looks artificial, aliases, has werid fuzzy pattern noise.

Why would that be the case? I can't get my head around it.

[dahlfors]

I was hoping someone with technical knowledge would chime in on why some cameras show a great ability to be sharpened by the sharpen mask in NLEs and some don't. For example the 5D mk III and 7D mk II. It's pretty strange. When you add the filter, the image comes to life, you can actually see more detail in fine objects and in the distance, I can almost swear it increases the actual resolution not just sharpness. While on the other cameras it just increases sharpness, and immediately results in a digital mess, looks artificial, aliases, has werid fuzzy pattern noise.

Why would that be the case? I can't get my head around it.

 

 

How harsh the compression is and the compression methods being used will matter the most when it comes to sharpening compressed imagery.

 

To understand how to tweak sharpening and on which footage it works: open up differently compressed frames in Photoshop and inspect separate color channels. Don't just look at the RGB color channels, but inspect it in LAB color space with separate chroma channel as well to visualize how the compression has changed the image. Then get back to RGB mode and play with either Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask - where you can choose different values for the sharpening radius. Try this on differently compressed video frames, highly compressed JPEG's etc.

 

Lossy codecs like JPEG or H.264 also compress better when you blur the image a bit (in the save for web dialog in Photoshop there is actually an option to add blur to the photo for better compression). My main digital imaging knowledge comes from still/design area, so I'm not entirely certain on this, but I assume that cameras that produces a softer image by default actually have more bitrate headroom to keep more details in the image without macroblocking and other artefacts of compression - which will be helpful when sharpening.

 

Considering the quality and detail Nikon cameras output by default at their fairly low bitrate, I suspect you'd have better results sharpening Nikon footage if you'd record over HDMI to an Atomos Ninja Star or similar.

[Inazuma]

Just wondering, did you test the AF ability of the 70d or 7d mk2 live view in low light? Also any chance you can test it against the a6000? Just curious really :) not planning to buy either

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Quite a logical point Dalhfors. It might be becaue the Canons have a better codec/compression rate.

Inazuma: yes I did actually test it only inside the store at night at 6400 ISO with horrible yellow/orange lights with a 50mm wide open at 1.8, the cheapest Canon lens, it works perfectly. This will sound a bit fanboyish but, it never misses a focus mark, and I mean never. It's what I can see with my eyes. You can point the camera, set it to face detection and just go stand in front of the camera, and you will have perfect focus on your eyes even when you move significantly. It's a revelation for video production. I think we will see this in all future video cameras up to the alexa level. It's just too awesome to miss after using it. It's also programmed to be very natural and organic in the focus pulls and doesn't feel at all ''auto''. I would claim it's better than manual focus for accuracy and consistency and organic focus pulling. That's a big statement for an old-school manual only guy, but we just have to go with the technology and the time. The 7D also adds the ability to slow the focus transitions down to a very low level, and to speed it up to a very quick level (suitable for stills), I also thought the 7D mk II AF worked better even if it lacks the touchsreen. The silent joystick is almost as good and the face tracking is perfect anyway so it knows where it needs to focus without even your input at all. You can't imagine how this will revolutionize the wedding/event/documentary filmmaking world, especially once the C100 mk II users use it and when it's implemented on the C300/500 successors, then you will start seeing how professionals will use it extensively. It as big as a revolution in the video shooting experience of large sensor cameras. Focus pullers, start looking for a weekend job from now!


Haven't tested it against the A6000's no, at all, so absolutely no idea, but I would hardly believe it comes close for video AF performance. For example the GH4 wasn't even worth comparing and it has arguably the best AF mirrorless system. It hunted on every pull, missed a lot of marks, didn't track well at all, so virtually unusable. While on the 70D and 7D when you first try it you will trust shooting with it on the highest end paid levels without any fear.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Can somebody guess which camera of the above this is? (it's sharpened a bit.)

[cojocaru27]

judgeing the dr i would say it is a ff so i would go for d750 or 5d mark3. Did you add some noise reduction also? it seems very "digital" in the shadows without any natural noise there, just my thought. thx for sharing.

[hmcindie]

I was hoping someone with technical knowledge would chime in on why some cameras show a great ability to be sharpened by the sharpen mask in NLEs and some don't. For example the 5D mk III and 7D mk II. It's pretty strange. When you add the filter, the image comes to life, you can actually see more detail in fine objects and in the distance, I can almost swear it increases the actual resolution not just sharpness. While on the other cameras it just increases sharpness, and immediately results in a digital mess, looks artificial, aliases, has werid fuzzy pattern noise.

Why would that be the case? I can't get my head around it.

 

A lot of cameras are already quite sharpened out of the box. Those sharpening artifacts (halos etc) will also get sharpened, enhancing the digital look. When you take out the built-in sharpening of the 5dIII it will completely remove any and all sharpening. A lot of other videocameras will still sharpen the image even when set to 0. 5d is completely soft at 0. But that's the reason it sharpens so well afterwards. The codec is also way better than similar codecs (5dIII h264 all-i has less compression artifacts than the a7s).

[IronFilm]

As Canon was the first to introduce the DSLR video option to the masses and everyone of us probably owned one

 

False, and very unfortunately an extremely commonly believed falsehood. 

But it was Nikon who was first to implement video in a DSLR. With the Nikon D90.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Cojo: Yes, it's the D810. I love the image on this camera, especially for wide detailed shots, and it's not just about resolution it's about the whole feel of the image, very filmic and pleasing.

Iron: Yes I know the D90 was technically the first DSLR to shoot video, I owned one when it first came out, a hideous camera. I said the first to "bring DSLR video to the masses", which is what Canon did with the 5D mk II. I don't consider the D90 to have a role in starting the DSLR video revolution at all. I don't even consider them to be useful video cameras at all before the D800 came out, after then they are now even exceeding Canon for video, which is great. The d90 recorded hideous 720p (more like SD) resolution with a ridiculous amount of aliasing and moire, and no manual control over exposure and the worst rolling shutter there is. No serious filmmakers used it. But fair enough, it's the first DSLR to record the liveview feed.  

[IronFilm]

I just don't like how people constantly state Canon was "first", which reinforces people's misconceptions about Canon. 

As not only is not technically true (as that is the D90, which I too started out with), but also the general gist of it isn't true either. As Canon didn't *bring* video to the indie filmmakers, not at all. They accidentally stumbled across it. (as can be seen in how they acted with their subsequent DSLRs, more or less no video improvement. As they were not "bringing it", was just a fluke)

[Guest]

You've opened up a whole canikon of worms here Ebrahim!

[Andrew Reid]

Let's see how far Nikon have taken video since the D90 shall we!

 

 

In contrast to Canon who have only fixed moire on one model, and taken high quality video off DSLRs altogether, to put it on Cinema EOS cameras.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Yes I hear you. In terms of fast progress and continuous improvement of image quality, Nikon wins. Canom brought out the 5D mk II, and since then in image quality they only fixed moire and aliasing, and increased sensitivity. While Nikon seems to be pushing a bit farther and progressing the image quality in each new generation, something that can't be said about Canon. The D5300 image is improved over the 5200, which is improved over the 5100, which is improved over the 5000. Also with the D3300 line, same with D7000 line, they don't introduce a new model without having better video quality. While Canon had the same 5D mk II image in the subsequent 550D, 600D, 650D, 700D, 1200D, 100D, 60D, 70D, 7D, Eos M, and Eos M2. That gives a bit of frustration when looking at the company as a whole, and it's the reason why many are hating Canon, they make new products with the same video image quality.