@ssh I am fortunate to own both a D800 and GH2, and have used the cameras together on several shoots. Each has their strengths, and while the D800 is a great workhorse, the hacked GH2 just has the edge when you're exposing a well-lit scene. The D800 is better for lower light sensitivity, better DR, or when you need a wider angle (at least until the metabones MFT adaptor becomes available.)

Here is a sample that I shot with both cameras -- see if you can tell which angle is the GH2, and which the D800.

I'm thinking about selling my aging D700 to get D800. I am totally satisfied with D700's stills, and the only reason I'd get D800 is the video. Right now I carry GH2 for video and D700 for stills, would be nice to have the best of both worlds in one body. I bet some of you handled or even own both GH2 and D800. Would you be so kind to share your COMPARATIVE impressions?

I don't know how much they can change in firmware. Real time CODECs (like in cameras) tend to be half as efficient as non real time codecs (like on computers). I estimate that Nikon's 28MBPS CODEC is as good as other 50MBPS real time CODECs. It would be cool, though, if they could raise the bitrate parameter in firmware. We'll have to see if they do anything like that. That and if they can pixel-bin instead of line skipping.

Nikon does have a clean HDMI output, which with Ninja and others offers perfect motion rendering and 4:2:2 color sub-sampling. The CODEC uses QP parameters all the way down to a level of 1. This is interesting because 8-bit output doesn't benefit much from anything below a QP of 5. Does this mean that internally the CODEC is designed for 10-bit data? Nikon doesn't have any other video camera stuff - eventually they would be able to offer 10-bit video data without messing up another of their market segments. Interesting things to think about.

Historically Nikon has never offered a major functional update with firmware. Imagine the effect on the market they would have if they offered 10-bit per channel video with a simple firmware update!

As for Ninja vs AVCHD data - there are some very smart guys (e.g. Dexter cinematographer and others) who opted not to record externally because they couldn't see a difference. This is not high motion stuff, so there still might be a big difference in motion rendering. I have a Ninja 2 - in the future I'll do some testing with it.

I've been analyzing the D800's AVCHD CODEC for a work project and discovered a few things that may be of interest:

Quantization matrices are completely flat (i.e. there are none). You would think that would over-stress the CODEC, but remarkably it doesn't.

A typical frame has QP values ranging from very low (even 1 in many cases) to quite high (up to 30). This is actually a very good thing because if a macroblock can achieve a target quality using a higher QP value it saves space. This differs from the GH2, for example, in that the GH2 typically uses a narrow range of QP values.

The D800 uses every type of macroblock encoding imaginable - 4x4, 8x8, and 16x16 in every possible way. This makes things much more efficient (at the price of needing much more processing power).

The D800 stream contains no buffer management parameters. You don't really need such data for editors, but I'm a little surprised that the internal playback doesn't need them.

All in all, Nikon's CODEC is very, very impressive; and the quality it achieves at it's bitrate is amazing. How did they do it? Well, probably by throwing a lot of processing power at the task - much of it likely in hardware. This is a different approach than Panasonic has taken (they use software CODECS). Panasonic uses things like custom matrices, etc... to optimize the relatively lower amount of processing power available. The GH2, for example, can't support trying nearly as many QP values and encoding methods which diminishes the efficiency of the CODEC. Nikon's approach appears to be to throw a massive amount of processing power at the task and therefore achieve very efficient use of bandwidth.

H.265 is a new standard that achieves much better use of bandwidth by doing a lot more processing. It's a trade-off; better bandwidth efficiency vs more work. The same can be said about various H.264 CODECS; some achieve better bandwidth efficiency by doing more work. Just because encoding features are available in H.264 doesn't mean they are being used (the GH1 didn't use most of the available encoding methods and even the GH2 doesn't use a lot of them). The Nikon D800 appears to use everything available. Very impressive...

Nikon Gamma Controls v0.1 Beta Test:

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6292/nikon-gamma-controls-v0.1-beta-test#Item_1

Check it out, this is the breakthrough that takes Nikon DSLR's where no GH2 has gone before!

Here's a very interesting comment on a forum from someone claiming to be the DP on "Wilfred":

Brad Lipson on 01.14.13 @ 4:07PM As the director of photography of Wilfred and the person who works closely with Director Randall Einhorn on the show, I was a bit surprised to see all these articles popping up on the internet with Tim Arasheben discussing the look and lighting of the show, ISO and camera performance pertaining to the look. But my email inbox is continually inundated with emails from DP friends and colleagues and many other industry people asking why this is, so I thought I should look at these articles and respond. I’m not sure how it is that our C camera operator and camera gear supplier is the one being interviewed as he is not the one in the hot seat on a daily basis, meeting production deadlines, making creative and technical lighting decisions, going to production on an daily basis to make lighting, grip and camera equipment and man power decisions that will work with the budget to get the job done and basically running the set along with Randall. It is clear from the above article Tim is about promoting his Cinoflex without really giving credit to the person that has to do all of the above on an ongoing basis. But just for the record, Tim has no idea what my shooting ratios are, and the specific decisions that I make with my gaffer Tom Pugh and key grip Kevin Ball each and every day on the set that create the “very dissected and specific lighting” that he refers to in the article above.

Seriously was the the 9 minute version the short from the award winning director? I thought it was the trailer at first then I found the "trailer" for the trailer I saw.

http://brokennightmovie.com/

@hay

will post screen grabs next week if requested

Yes, please post it!

I have used hacked GH2, GH3 and d800e+ninja2. GH3 best picture, easiest post and best green screen. GH2 and D800e similar green screen and post but better detail on GH2.

@hay I would love to see screen grabs.

I've been looking to have a FF camera for stills also, but if the dynamic range (really 12 stops?) is better than a GH3 and the sharpness is comparable, then I am considering it highly. The BMC is a great tool, but it takes a lot more investment beyond the camera body and workflow which I cannot see reasonable as I don't make a living with video. The one positive I consider heavily is the D800 resale value which the BMC (MFT especially) and GH cameras can't compare to.

.

Another article about Dexter:

http://www.studiodaily.com/2013/01/nikons-d800-gets-down-and-dirty-for-dexter/

Scroll down to next to last paragraph: ' Nikon support of the D800s "has been and continues to be phenomenal," says Fletcher. "They listen to what we need, they come to the set, they implement firmware updates as needed. That's all made some very unique shots possible that we just couldn't have gotten otherwise'

Perhaps an ISO and/or picture profile tweak? - Very interesting.