L M Lloyd
Forum Enthusiast
So wait, one minute the discussion is about how using an expensive EF lens makes an SLR so much better than a video camera, and as soon as I point out that there are even more expensive, and quite a bit better, video lenses, suddenly that is TOO expensive, and we are talking about doing it on the cheap, not doing it well. Seems like a bit of a moving goalpost.
Whether you specifically said it or not, the undercurrent running through all these discussions of video on an SLR, is this desire to believe that an SLR is somehow going to be able to record video better than any video camera in the world, because it has a better sensor and better lenses than any video camera. This is in fact a complete flight of fancy, because what you are doing is comparing pro or semi-pro SLRs costing thousands of dollars, to cheap consumer handycams costing almost nothing. As soon as it is pointed out that actually video cameras can already do everything that is being billed as amazing in SLR video, the argument then immediately becomes one of how cheap it is, not how good it is.
First off, the last I checked, this was the 1D/1Ds/5D forum, so I foolishly assumed that we were talking about features that might be added to future versions of those cameras, not a feature in the D90, seeing as how this is not the D90 forum, or the 50D forum, or the Rebel forum. I checked just a few seconds ago, the 1Ds still costs $7,800, and the 70-200mm 2.8L still costs $1,700. That puts you at $9,500, which would easily buy you an XL H1 and a lens.
Secondly, perhaps you haven't seen much TV lately, or watched any indy films, but for the past several years, people have been doing pretty well at getting really nice DOF off of those video cameras, even if their sensor isn't as big as yours.
Too expensive for what? There are plenty of people, some apparently right on this forum, who spend far more than that in a year on still photography gear.
No, just to make sure, I pulled out an old DV magazine from 2006, and there has never been a Canon XL camera that was over $9,000.
How has the D90 demonstrated it is trivial to add? The video on the D90 is all but unusable, doesn't even look as good as some of the video coming out of some of the higher-end P&S cameras, and can't even come close to competing, on video quality, with the cheap handycams you can get at Best Buy. Still, it is the feature Nikon is hyping the most about the camera, which usually means it is something they put a fair amount of work into the feature, and want to make sure people know about it. From where I sit, it looks like it is an incredibly difficult feature to properly implement, and will require quite a bit of R&D before it produces anything of any real use other than YouTube clips.
Compared to photo-related features that really are trivial to add, like an on-board programmable shutter timer, or a mirror lock up button, or built-in wireless file transfer, or 64-bit drivers, which Canon has seen fit not to add, a video mode seems pretty complex to me.
How is it not like the print button? I know my wife has used the video mode on her G9 exactly one time more than I have used the print button on my 5D. That is to say, I have never used the print button once, and she recorded one movie when she got the camera, just to see how it worked, and has never recorded another one. I don't see how that makes them very different. I'm sure someone thinks the print button is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I still wish Canon had spent their time and money better.
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The goal is to overcome the deliberate nature of the process.
