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COULD THIS DSLR BE YOUR NEXT HD VIDEO CAPTURE SYSTEM?
DV readers know that I have long been an advocate of 35mm lens adapters. They are an effective way to add a whole new visual dimension to HD camcorder footage. And as with any tool, there are downsides. 35mm adapters add weight and length to a camera rig. They also aren't very forgiving and must be set up carefully to deliver optimum results. That's why I was excited to learn this last fall that two DSLR manufacturers were introducing still cameras with video-capture capability. The Nikon D 90 was introduced first, and includes 72Op HD video capture capability. Canon's 5D Mark II, with a 108Op mode, followed soon after. Both cameras allow you to use an incredible selection of lenses to capture video with a 35mm depth of field. On the surface, these announcements are very exciting news. But what are the limitations and specifics of these new tools? Here, I'll take an in-depth look at video capture on the less expensive of the two cameras, the sub-$ 1,000 D90. 1 will not be analyzing its still-imaging capabilities.
SPECIFICATIONS
The D90 features a 12. 9- megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor and offers a high-resolution 3" LCD on the back. The sensor being APSC sized, expect a 1.5x crop factor (18mm becomes 27mm, etc). Its full ISO range is from 100-6400, so low-light capability is exceptional. Video is captured at 24p 1280x720, 640x424 and 320x216 resolutions. The compression codec used is Motion JPEG, and bit rate is limited to just under 16MB/s. Sixteen-bit mono, 1 1kHz audio is captured from an internal mie. There is no external mie input. The D90 uses standard SDHC cards for storage, and video files come off the camera in an AVI container. Capture time is currently limited to five minutes in HD and 20 minutes in the other modes. Five minutes of HD video weighs in at about 600MB.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
The good news about the D90 is that this svelte little camera can capture beautiful video. With a sensor nearly identical in size to the RED One, depth of field is beautifully shallow. And the excellent lenses available for still...