Wildlife video recording with D4

Unfortunately, Nikon's flagship camera gets thrashed in terms of FX (full frame) video quality by the prosumer D800, and frankly, it's a shame.

These days I shoot far more video footage (corporate, live action, product, etc.) than I do still for my job, and when I decided to upgrade my gear when the D4 first came out, I just assumed the D4 would have superior video capture. Was very disappointed to find out it doesn't. Because of that, I do use the CX mode on the D4 for close up product shoots (such as touch demos on mobile devices), but for live action/talking head video where a FX is more appropriate (and so I can make use of more of my lenses), I was forced into paying an extra $3300 for the D800. (yes, I'm still pretty miffed at having to buy a second camera to cover all of my video capture needs).

So, unless you want to own two Nikon bodies, you have two choices - 1) you can use the D4 in crop mode, which does give superb full HD 1080p video, and would mean you could get even more reach out of your lenses, but it also means for any average ranged video, you would have to use wider lenses. 2) Sell the D4 and get a D800 which would allow you to always shoot great footage in FX mode, allowing use of more lenses.

In my experiences, where the D4 excels in stills, also is applied to video - meaning much better low light noise control (which is even more important in video since you can't just run it through Noise Ninja or Topaz DeNoise), better color reproduction, and almost no aliasing. The D800, on the other hand, gives the advantage of great FX footage, but aliasing is far more prevalent, noise can quickly get out of control, and color reproduction, while good, just doesn't compare to the D4.

It's a bunch of tradeoffs, because Nikon doesn't have a single pro body that does it all for video yet. And, no, an external recording device isn't going to noticeably improve video quality.

If you are shooting a static subject that doesn't move around much, you can use the camera's AF in Live View to set focus, and then just leave it. It's not advisable to use continuous autofocus - instead, use manual focus on subjects that move around a lot. For those cases, I purchased a SmallHD DP6 (http://www.smallhd.com/products/dp6/) for the Focus Assist feature (really makes it easy to tell where the focus/DoF is on the shot, and you can see where the range moves as you rack focus).