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Movie Shooting Menu

Lesson 27 from: Nikon D5 Fast Start

John Greengo

Movie Shooting Menu

Lesson 27 from: Nikon D5 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

27. Movie Shooting Menu

Next Lesson: Autofocus

Lesson Info

Movie Shooting Menu

Alright folks, it is time to move on to the movie shooting menu which is going to have some stuff that seems very, very similar to what we just talked about. So expect some deja vu coming up but this is specifically when your camera is in the movie shooting mode. So the first one, which I skipped over, is one you could reset everything in the movie mode. Second item here is you could rename the files that your movie gets called. So if you wanna change that three letter code to your initials or your company name or something like that, you're free to do that. Here is where you get to choose the destination of the movies. If you have a different size card or a different speed card, for instance, that you think would be better for shooting movies, you can choose whether the movies are shot to slot one or slot two. And so this is slightly different than the destination that we talked about earlier in the previous tab. Choosing the image area. Here we can shoot with the full frame sensor or...

we can choose with a DX when we're shooting movies. And so most of the time we're probably gonna want the FX full frame but we can go into the DX if we need to. There is a number of different sizes that we can shoot. The 4K indicates that it's 4,000 pixels on the long side which is slightly deceptive because it's actually 3,840. But let's take a look at some of these image areas. And so normally we have a three by two aspect ratio but when we go in to shoot movies, it's a wider aspect ratio which is why we're cropping off the top and bottom. The blue is the 4K area, as I have mentioned before, there is a crop to that. The standard HD is using the full width but just a little bit of the bars on the top and the bottom and then we do have an HD crop area in the middle for those of you who wanna have a little extra reach on your lenses for doing bird, wildlife, or sports photography, needing that extra reach out of your lenses. And so for our standard photo, we can see what our 4K crop is and what our final image is gonna look like, what our HD crop looks like and our final image, and then our HD crop option if we wanna get in really close on subjects and so all of those are options for shooting videos. So that is your frame size and frame rate. Now, with movie quality, we don't have raw and JPEG but we do have high and normal. And so this has to do with how much compression. In most cases, you're probably gonna want to get the highest quality possible. If you do wanna save file size and you don't need all that quality, you could set this to a normal size and you're just gonna be able to store more data on memory cards and hard drives going forward. ISO sensitivity setting jumps into a sub menu, very much what we looked like before but in this case it's dedicated just to shooting in movies. So you can set a particular number setting with it. You also have the auto control with it that can be turned on and off. And then you can choose the maximum sensitivity setting so it's a little bit different 'cause you don't have the minimum shutter speed 'cause it works a little bit differently when we're shooting video but you can choose what's the maximum ISO that you want to go to when shooting movies. And so ISO 100's our best setting so that's where we normally wanna have it and auto ISO might be handy for some people but other people will wanna have more control over it. When we go into the movie mode, what white balance do we wanna have? Is it a particular setting or maybe we just wanna keep it the same as whatever our still photography is, your choice. Scrolling down, picture control. This is where it becomes a little bit more important because we don't have raw shooting, one of the things that's very important to people shooting video is not losing information, either in the highlights or in the shadows. And so Nikon has recently included a flat profile which gives a rather boring, flat look to your image but allows an image to be graded and worked with in post production software much more easily. And so let's take a look at what standard video versus flat video looks like. And if you look at the shadow area and the highlight area, you'll see that there's more information and with somebody who knows what they're doing and the right type of software, they're gonna be able to tweak that flat to make it look even better than the standard and retain all the information that it needs. And so for the more serious user, that flat option's gonna be a good option if you're willing to do the editing later on. If you just wanna grab a quick video and get it straight out of the camera, the standard option or one of the other presets should be fine for you. Same option here where we can go in and save and customize these and adjust them further from what they already have set for us. And you can rename them as well. The camera has a built in microphone that you can go in and adjust. You can manually control it if you want to, you can go in and tweak the settings and see the levels that you see in there. You can change and tweak the microphone so that it picks up vocal sounds a little bit more easily. Normally, you're just gonna leave it on wide range where it picks up everything normally for general videos. You have a wind noise reduction which will help dampen the sound of wind buffeting the side of the camera. Leave that turned off unless it's very windy out. You can turn on the High ISO noise reduction which, once again, will reduce the noise when using higher ISOs. You may need to do a little testing here to see which one fits your taste. Normally I just leave that turned off. Now there is time lapse movie and we looked at something a little earlier and just to get my terms correctly called that was the, where is it? The interval timer shooting. And this is time lapse movie. They do the same thing, the difference is with time lapse movie is it compresses all of those photos into a final video file in the camera. You no longer have access to the individual JPEG frames. You now have just one file. So if you want a quick video out of the camera, this is the simple way of doing it but it gives you less options because you're not able to really kind of break it apart and work on particular things. I know that I've done time lapses and maybe a bird flew through one frame and I wanted to clone that bird out, you don't have that option or at least it's much more difficult working with that video file than the still images. But we're gonna have the same type of options as far as when do we want it to start, how long are the intervals, and the shooting time for you. And it's kinda nice here 'cause they do a little bit of math for you. If I shoot a five second interval for 350 shots, how much time is that gonna take up and how much time is that final video going to be? And so there is some nice math that is done for you here in the menu system. And then you can also have the exposure smoothing turned on or off and if you want really smooth exposures between brightness levels because they're changing, you might wanna leave that turned on. Some people just wanna get kinda the straight footage out of the camera and they'll be leaving it turned off. Flicker reduction is something very different, well, notably different than what we were talking about a short time ago in the previous section. In this case, it is looking at the fluorescent lights and it's making sure that it doesn't flicker when you are viewing on the back of the camera. And so normally I would leave this in auto where it automatically senses the flicker of the light and it works around it. If you wanted to set it 50 or 60, you could, but I think auto will solve most problems. Electronic VR is something that was added in in the updated firmware version and this is where the camera will crop in on your image a little bit when you're shooting video and if you are moving the camera around, it will steady the image electronically. And so for somebody who has unsteady hands, this could work out quite well. It will only work in the standard full HD mode, not in the crop mode, not in the 4K mode. And so you may need to see if you want to use this. Most people I'm thinking are not gonna wanna use this 'cause they don't wanna crop in and they are gonna use some of the device to steady the camera and it's not something that advanced users typically wanna do.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

NikonĀ® D5 Recommended Settings
NkonĀ® D5 Fast Start Class Slides

Ratings and Reviews

Michelle Mealing
 

As usual, John Greengo has provided me with a wealth of information, this time to decide on my next Nikon camera purchase. John has a talent for explaining technical aspects in a simply to understand, yet intelligent, language. I feel very lucky to be able to tap into the knowledge of such experts and thank the day I found out about Creative Live. Unfortunately I had to miss a little part of the live broadcast due to international time differences. I will definitely be watching the class again and again (there's so much content). Thanks John and Creative Live. Looking forward to my next class.

a Creativelive Student
 

Already set the Fn3 button for Voice Memo - easy peasy thanks to this and so many other "buried" ( in the manual ) treasures. Notwithstanding three years with the D4 and one year with the D5, I am substantially more familiar and comfortable with the available tools / features of this amazing camera, Nikon's D5. Thank you, John, for the relaxed, easy-to-follow yet informative, professional instruction - well done!

Dave Safley
 

John Greengo does a fantastic job of going over all the great features of this camera. Yes, there is a lot of information, but the format of the class enabled me to drive right into the features I needed for an upcoming shoot. I am new to Creative Live but this class is showing me the fantastic value of this platform. Happy Shooting!

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