Canons vs. Nikons Video DSLRs- the entire line up comparison

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

To put things in prespective on where Canon DSLRs stand for video shooters.

As Canon was the first to introduce the DSLR video option to the masses and everyone of us probably owned one, we love the colours, the feel and aesthetic of the image, and we also got used the ergonomics, it's become second nature for us to use Canon DSLRs that everything else seem like a compromise by comparison, at least for me. So it's useful to summarize how Canon DSLRs stand now with their latest generation compared to their main DSLR maker. I was at my friend's camera store last night and we spend the entire night comparing Canon DSLRs to Nikons, just for video mode. So here are the findings.

_______________________________________________________________

1- Canon 1200D vs. Nikon D3300

D3300 has slightly higher resolution.
D3300 has significantly less aliasing and moire
D3300 has about a stop advantage in low-light performance
D3300 has 60p in 1080p, quality similar to 30p mode
D3300 has clean HDMI output with embedded audio
D3300 had a better screen (900k vs. 400k)

they both have similar rolling shutter, similar audio, similar colour performance (although I personally prefer the magical Nikon's). The Canon has the advantage of live-view being able to adjust iris, and the focus assist zoom is much better.

_______________________________________________________________

2- Canon 700D vs. Nikon D5300

D5300 has slightly higher resolution
D5300 has significantly less moire and aliasing
D5300 has about a stop advantage in low light
D5300 has 60p in 1080p, similar to 30p in quality.
D5300 has clean HDMI output.
D5300 has a better, larger screen.

Rolling shutter is marginally better on the Canon, ability to adjust iris in live-view, and also the live view zoom assist is better. Similar colour performance and audio quality.

_______________________________________________________________

3- Canon 70D vs. Nikon D7100

D7100 has slightly higher resolution
D7100 has significantly lower aliasing and moire
D7100 has a clean HDMI output
D7100 has a 1.3x crop mode (horrible but adequate for closeups)
70D has a lovely autofocus system, magical to say at least, you touch the subject and it goes there, silently, fluidly and organically, it looks better than most focus pullers. It's accurate, organic, and tracks what you touch.
70D has an articulated screen.
70D has a better live-view implementation of zoom and iris.
70D has higher bitrate of 90mbps ALL I vs 24 mbps AVCHD
70D is just nicer to use!

Both have similar rolling shutter, audio performance,

Note: the 70D aliasing makes it unsuitable for serious video production.

_______________________________________________________________

4- Canon 7D mk II vs. Nikon D7100

-D7100 has slightly better resolution. But strangely, the 7D image can be sharpened to show effectively higher resolution (actual detail) than the sharpened D7100 image, which doesn't respond as well to sharpening.
-7D has about a stop low-light advantage
-7D has 60p at 1080p, similar quality, D7100 doesn't
-7D has an all I 90mbits codec vs long gop 24mbits on the Nikon
-7D has clean HDMI output with embedded audio and timecode for triggering. the Nikon (drops to 720p when recording internally), only outputs 30p while the Canon allows selecting 24p and 30p. The Canon screen can stay open whilst outputting the clean signal, and it comes with an HDMI locking protector. It's over-ally a much better implementation.
-7D is the first Canon I've seen allowing a native 24p capture mode, not 23.97.
-7D is the first Canon I've seen allowing MP4 and MOV capture.
-7D is the first Canon I've seen with a built-in timelapse mode (in the D7100) but the 7D implementation is better and it has a surprisingly good HDR timelapse recording function where it combines up to 4 exposures to creat each frame.
-7D has a marvelous Autofocus system in video mode, an the ability to rack focus with the silent joystick is surprisingly intuitive. It's a very good feature.
-The 7D has better audio, has a headphone jack for monitoring and the ability to adjust sound level silently with the touch pad whilst recording.

Both have similar screens, similar aliasing performance, similar rolling shutter, and also the Canon has a better implementation for adjusting iris and live-view zoom assist Both have great colours.

-Note: I was pleasingly surprised with the 7D, especially after the Nikons beat the Canon on the previous rounds. The 7D is just a nice s35 camera to use. It's more expensive though in Nikon's defense, and is more comparable to a D300 successor than a D7100)

_______________________________________________________________

5- Canon 6D vs Nikon D610

-D610 has slightly higher resolution. 6D image can't be sharpened.
-D610 has clean HDMI ouput
-D610 has s35 crop mode
-D610 has a headphone jack for monitoring audio
-6D has around a stop advantage in lowlight (it's a very, very, very clean high ISO camera, better than the 5D)
-6D has a higher ALL I 90mbits vs 24mbits avchd
-6D has the liveview zoom and iris advantage.

Note: both have horrible aliasing and moire, which alone makes both unsuitable for serious video production.

_______________________________________________________________

6- Canon 6D/5D mk II vs. Nikon D750

The D750 hasn't arrived yet so sadly was unable to check it out. It seems like the best Nikon for video and perhaps the best DSLR for video but still haven't tried it.

_______________________________________________________________

7- Canon 5D mk III vs. Nikon D810

D810 has higher resolution - also the Canon can be sharpened to slightly match it and looks natural for some reason while sharpening the Nikon results in a digitally artificial image with artefacts, but un-sharpened it's still better than the sharpened 5D. it's closer to the 5D raw.
D810 has a s35 crop mode (quality takes a big hit but suitable for close-ups)
D810 has 60p in 1080p (the 5D 720p 60p is clean though with no aliasing or moire and adequately detailed)
D810 has a log-like picture profile (though Canon offers Cinestyle)
D810 has Zebra pattern for exposure
5D has about half a stop advantage in low-light performance
5D has a better implementation of clean HDMI output (see 7D vs d7100)
5D has the ability to silently change audio levels whilst recording with a touch-pad
5D has a better liveview implementation of zoom assist, although the D810 can change iris while in live-view (horay!)
5D has a very reliable path of recording 14bit CinemaDNG raw internally to CF card, with all the extra peaking/zebras/waveforms/ etc

_______________________________________________________________

8- Canon 1Dx vs. Nikon D4s

1Dx has significantly higher resolution, and I mean significantly, the 1080p of the D4s looks a bit worse than the 720p on the 1Dx!
1Dx has a higher bitrate of ALL I 90mpbs vs 24mpbs AVCHD
1Dx has better live-view zoom implementation
D4s has clean HDMI output
D4s has a headphone jack for audio monitoring
(both above two points are in the 5D yet bizarrely not here)
D4s has a s35 crop (as horrible as the fullframe), and a s16 crop that looks stunning

both have identical low-light performance (which is strange as I thought the D4s would be better), rolling shutter is the same,

note: the 1Dx is identical to the 5D for video, same image, same options, but loses the clean HDMI output, and the headphone jack, and all the advantages of Magiclantern including raw internal recording. No reason to use neither these cameras for video.

_______________________________________________________________

Note: if you're comfortable with magiclantern, add to the comparison above: Focus peaking, Zebras, Waveform monitor, on screen meters, crop markers, and a few other feature to all the Canons.

-in testing we used a landscape shot outside for all the cameras to test resolution, and the indoors for low-light performance, a chart for aliasing and moire, and we had a list of all the usability features to compare. The images were all exported to Sony Vegas 13 and viewed on a calibrated Eizo monitor. It's a pretty accurate real-life test.
_______________________________________________________________

Just for fun we put a CF card in the 1DC and shot a landscape out the window, and put an SSD in an Epic Dragon and shot the same at 6K, I liked the 1Dc's image better. God I love that damn 4K Canon Log image So much that I quickly turned it off, stopped testing and left the building before my credit card makes any stupid 10$K decisions!

 

[Marsu42]

Note: if you're comfortable with magiclantern, add to the comparison above: Focus peaking, Zebras, Waveform monitor, on screen meters, crop markers, and a few other feature to all the Canons.

Imho this is the real Canon killer feature - of course no thanks to Canon as a company except for not aggressively counteracting/disabling 3rd party firmware addons: 14bit resolution, full dynamic range uncompressed raw video!

Admittedly it's a postprocessing hassle, but the ML devs are very active on imrproving their mlv container format and there are more and more projects supporting it w/o further conversion.

The Magic Lantern development has moved away from the current "rolling release" nightlies, so to see what they're up to next look at their branches and esp. pull requests where the real bleeding edge is: https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-lantern/commits/all

 

[zlatko]

Maybe it's because of Magic Lantern, but every wedding videographer I've seen in the past 5 years has used Canon, not Nikon or anything else.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

It's because Nikon didn't make good video DSLRs until VERY recently, for the past 5 years Canon DSLR have been the best video cameras for the price, no one was making s35 and full frame video cameras for 500-2000$ with that level of quality that they started a revolution in the film industry and they made a huge name off of that. Nikon recently exceeded them with the D3300, D5300,y D610, D750. The only Canons that still hold the video crown compared to the nikons are the 5D mk III and 7D mk II now. The rest of the line up is far behind Nikon's, sadly. I wish Canon starts giving the 70D, 700D, 1200D the same 7D mk II video image and features, that would make them competitive to the market again, I am not holding my breath

By the way a note: the 7D mk II was a pleasnt surprise to me for video, in fact, the best all around video DSLR under 5$K! Even arguably better than the 5D with the standard s35 video sensor and all the features listed above. After using it it has a lovely clean image and is a dream to use ergonomically, with tons of small improvements over any canon camera before that makes it a complete package. So just ignore the internet and test yourself before judging. Please ignore the internet again!

another note: the D810 offered the best image quality in all the tests above among all Canon and Nikon DSLR line ups (except for the 1DC and 5D raw), and that says a lot. If your only criterion is image quality get the D810, it's a lovely image really, closer to the 5D raw than h.264 in detail, has no aliasing, has lovely colours, a near the top low-light performance (only 6D/1Dx best it marginally) There are many other aspects though listed above other than pure image quality.

As a quick summary.
D3300 wins it's category
D5300 wins
D7100 wins over 70D
7D mk II wins over D7100
D610 wins over 6D
D810 = 5D, this one is a bit conplicated than simply winning
1Dx wins over D4s

so, Canon 2, Nikon 4, hope Canin fixes these 4 soon and brings them on par with the 7D mk II and 5D mk III to be in the video conpetetion again. Again, not holding my breath.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

A frame grab from the test. Can somebody guess which camera of the above this is? (it's sharpened a bit)

 

[Marsu42]

But on what legal grounds would Canon try to fight ML? They could fight ML if ML reverse-engineered their firmware, since the firmware might be the property of Canon.

On the US firmware download page, there's something about re being not allowed while in the EU there isn't for some reason or another. Not that this would matter - would you like to have a global company sue your behind with an armada of lawyers, no matter if it turns out you're in the clear after half a decade of trials?

But the real threat is Canon simply disabling the 3rd party loader ML uses. As you might know, the ML "firmware" just patches one byte so that their "autoexec.bin" is loaded from the card - probably the same mechanism Canon uses for in-house fw development.

They can simply ship their next fw update w/o this or use a stronger fw update file encryption for their next dslrs so the signed(!) ML mini-fw won't be accepted anymore: Currently it's just xor, of course Canon knows it's been broken and ML has a signature key. So by not changing this they're unofficially allowing ML to run and say "Well, kids, be nice so daddy won't come over and take away your toys".

 

[Quasimodo]

I am not into video at all, but I find it strange that you have not include 1Dc, as it also a DSLR in addition to being a videocamera. (know that you mentioned it in the bottom comment, but I mean as a comparison..)

 

[whothafunk]

extremely sloppy comparison.

edit: nevermind, my fault in my extremely sloppy reading

 

[Hjalmarg1]

Thanks! Very interesting comparisson.

 

[unfocused]

Just my opinion, but it seems to me that Canon made a decision to "look the other way" regarding Magic Lantern.

I really don't see any downside to Canon. If Magic Lantern ever distributed something that harmed the camera, they would be within their rights to say the customer voided the warranty. (I'm guessing that somewhere in their warranty language there is a clause that would justify this.)

Canon gets a willing group of developers and beta testers for nothing. Their products gain usability that makes them more competitive. They don't sell firmware, so it represents a net gain, not a loss, in revenues.

The bigger threat, by far, comes from Yongnuo. Some of their clones are undoubtedly violating patents and their newer products are decently made and sell for a fraction of the cost of Canon products. I would think they represent most camera manufacturers worst nightmare – a Chinese company that offers low cost products that function identically to the name brand and are in the ballpark on quality.

 

[Marsu42]

But the real threat is Canon simply disabling the 3rd party loader ML uses. As you might know, the ML "firmware" just patches one byte so that their "autoexec.bin" is loaded from the card - probably the same mechanism Canon uses for in-house fw development.

There is always going to be someone with too much time on their hands willing to take up a challenge.

The challenge would involve opening your camera, unsoldering the firmware chip from the pcb and replace or reprogram it as it's done with hacked game consoles. If there's no software way to enable 3rd party code, that's it for 99.9% of the current ML users.

The reason ML devs didn't bothered with the 1DC have probably more to do with hassle, lack of access to a 1DC body, and having to support it,

Nope, Canon told them not to touch the 1dx or else, see the ML forum where this is stated for all to read. It's pretty easy to say "Well, any lawsuit will be dismissed anyway" from an armchair approach, but if you're the private individual w/o any law insurance being actually sued it might be another perspective altogether :-o

Last not least, and I'm happy at least the main ML dev is there with me, ML isn't made to pimp rich people's 1d gear for free or backport 1dc->1dx features. It's an enthusiast's project to expand the possibilities of low to midrange gear that limit creativity because Canon designed them with your Mom as a user in mind. In that spirit, the hilariously expensive €3000 5d3 is the absolute top of the line that qualifies for ML support.

 

[JohanCruyff]

To put things in prespective on where Canon DSLRs stand for video shooters.

2- Canon 700D vs. Nikon D5300
3- Canon 70D vs. Nikon D7100
4- Canon 7D mk II vs. Nikon D7100

I would add: some Canon bodies can benefit from STM Lenses.

 

[zlatko]

It's because Nikon didn't make good video DSLRs until VERY recently, for the past 5 years Canon DSLR have been the best video cameras for the price, no one was making s35 and full frame video cameras for 500-2000$ with that level of quality that they started a revolution in the film industry and they made a huge name off of that. Nikon recently exceeded them with the D3300, D5300,y D610, D750. The only Canons that still hold the video crown compared to the nikons are the 5D mk III and 7D mk II now. The rest of the line up is far behind Nikon's, sadly. I wish Canon starts giving the 70D, 700D, 1200D the same 7D mk II video image and features, that would make them competitive to the market again, I am not holding my breath

I'll be on the lookout for any wedding videographers shooting Nikon now that they have upped their game. Haven't seen any yet. So far, every videographer I see use Canon.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

I am not into video at all, but I find it strange that you have not include 1Dc, as it also a DSLR in addition to being a videocamera. (know that you mentioned it in the bottom comment, but I mean as a comparison..)

Price!

We didn't compare it to any Nikon DSLRs because it will surely win, it's not fair, it's double the price of the highest-end Nikon. Regarding the 1Dc as a camera though, it produces one of the finest imagest I've ever seen, even when compared to Alexa/Epic territory. It's just a stunning image with a remarkeable film-like response. It's hard to explain why an image looks lovely but it just does, it brings anything to life. It's perhaps the colour science, dynamic range, noise texture, 4k resolution, I am not sure. I just adore that 4K Canon Log image, and god how glorious people's faces look on that camera, the detail, the colour, the texture, it's just unique. It works up to 12800 ISO and has a s35 crop mode that looks almost better than any other s35 camera out there up to any price point, including the C300. I wish I could afford investing in one. Too expensive. I mean it's double the 1Dx for basically a firmware upgrade. I am almost certain with a firmware Canon can record the same window of sensor on the 1Dx and give us the same image, and I am certain they can easily do it with any of their cameras including the rebels, look at how the images look in stills mode, it's just a matter of taking a window and compressing it to MJPEG but for some reason they don't want to do it in anything but the 1DC. I really really wish Canon brings down the 1Dc features to the lower end line, at least the 1Dx line and 5D mk IV if we're lucky!

 

[Quasimodo]

I am not into video at all, but I find it strange that you have not include 1Dc, as it also a DSLR in addition to being a videocamera. (know that you mentioned it in the bottom comment, but I mean as a comparison..)

Price!

We didn't compare it to any Nikon DSLRs because it will surely win, it's not fair, it's double the price of the highest-end Nikon. Regarding the 1Dc as a camera though, it produces one of the finest imagest I've ever seen, even when compared to Alexa/Epic territory. It's just a stunning image with a remarkeable film-like response. It's hard to explain why an image looks lovely but it just does, it brings anything to life. It's perhaps the colour science, dynamic range, noise texture, 4k resolution, I am not sure. I just adore that 4K Canon Log image, and god how glorious people's faces look on that camera, the detail, the colour, the texture, it's just unique. It works up to 12800 ISO and has a s35 crop mode that looks almost better than any other s35 camera out there up to any price point, including the C300. I wish I could afford investing in one. Too expensive. I mean it's double the 1Dx for basically a firmware upgrade. I am almost certain with a firmware Canon can record the same window of sensor on the 1Dx and give us the same image, and I am certain they can easily do it with any of their cameras including the rebels, look at how the images look in stills mode, it's just a matter of taking a window and compressing it to MJPEG but for some reason they don't want to do it in anything but the 1DC. I really really wish Canon brings down the 1Dc features to the lower end line, at least the 1Dx line and 5D mk IV if we're lucky!

I totally see that

My point, although a subtle one, and not fully articulated was more that video is indeed important to Canon, but I think you are right that they may focus on other segments of the market than consumers, or even prosumers in this regard. The people I know who shoot video (either for companies, or commercial, or even for small film production) all use Canon, starting from 5DIII and upwards. Having asked them, they all seem to come back to the great lens selection as a uniting factor.