DSLR Video: Further thoughts?

[ukaskew]

Now the dust has settled a bit and some user generated content has started to appear, has anyone changed their mind, or had their thoughts confirmed by DSLR video? We had some pretty strong opinion here when the D90 / 5D MkII was announced, much of which I found a little strange as these would appear to be exceptional stills cameras, and much like Live View or other features you may not need/use/want - if you never feel the need to use it it's never going to bother you. I always thought of it as a film-making tool rather than a replacement for a consumer video camera, and that is how it seems to be used by most people, and the interesting thing is that when using it, it's actually very similar to setting up a stills shot.

Anyhow, I've had my D90 a couple of weeks and been blown away by the video functionality, with a 50mm 1.8 bolted on the output is very professional looking and film-like.

Some of the stuff already cropping up on Flickr and Youtube is excellent...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VCy3a5xBbG0
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9Hfd9KJdM
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_H93HgcEE0A

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettmurray/2927448272/


As I've been keeping an eye on it it's been interesting to see how things have been developing, people are discovering new and interesting things to do with it all the time, and I know there are student film-makers etc who are very excited by the idea and waiting to see how it develops. That's the key thing for me, we are at version 1, with future revisions/developments (particularly with the audio side of things) it can only get better. The biggest complaints with the D90 version (no autofocus / 5 minute max) would appear to be complete non-issues if used for short films etc, full-time manual focus actually makes perfect sense when you come to use it.

I don't really know what I'm doing yet and only have Windows Movie Maker, but I've put together a few snippets from when I've been in places anyway during the last two or three weeks (never shot or edited any film in my life). Of all the time using my D90 I would say 10 minutes has been spent on the video side of things (and none with a tripod yet), but I'm beginning to build up a bit of content whilst still figuring out the basics of it...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lC0djqViWP4

 

[sprog]

Some of the stuff already cropping up on Flickr and Youtube is excellent...

How can you tell? uploaded stuff like this is so compressed it could have been shot on a camera phone.

 

[ukaskew]

How can you tell? uploaded stuff like this is so compressed it could have been shot on a camera phone.

Based on the full size footage on my PC I would assume most of these vids look at least the same, if not much better.

I'm more interested/excited by the depth of field and things like that anyhow, the resolution is a given. Creatively it's a fantastic tool, and whilst my knowledge of video is non existent, I'm assuming it's a relatively cheap way of shooting in that sort of way, I've not seen any consumer video cameras that can do anything quite like what is reasonably easy to get out of a D90.

 

[dfrear]

In my opinion its about time! The ability to use a range of lenses makes all the difference, fish eye video for example, macro video? All sounds pretty interesting to me!