Gizmodo D800 and 5D Mark III Comparison

[JustinTArthur]

Finally someone got their hands on both bodies:
http://gizmodo.com/5897098/d800-vs-5d-mark-iii-which-shoots-better-video/
Summary: Nothing too new. 5D Mark III is better in low light. D800 has significantly more detail, but crappy moire.

 

[JustinTArthur]

Man, in the low light footage, the D800 looks pathetic ISO1600+. How can it look so good at still and so bad at video?

 

[Musouka]

In a nutshell:

Canon 5DIII:
- Better Low-Light
- Less Moire

Nikon D800:
- Sharper and More Detailed
- Less Rolling Shutter

So is Canon capturing upscaled 720P video as some have said and that's why it's less sharp?

 

[psolberg]

Man, in the low light footage, the D800 looks pathetic ISO1600+. How can it look so good at still and so bad at video?

it's video is more detailed than on the canon so it isn't "so bad" necessarily. moire is indeed an issue as with the 5DmkII. Although it is an issue that hasn't stopped all that many people. Moire also looks more controlled in the D800 than with the 5DmkII which would fall appart at the sight of any brick wall. Moire in the 5DIII looks to still be present in fine details of bricks but a LOT less noticeable. The question is, do you want detail or do you want to avoid moire...good to have choices I guess. I'm on the fence on this one.

However, I must say that the 5DmkIII looks REALLY SOFT to my eyes. I wish it had a way to turn whatever moire reduction filter they are throwing in there for when you're filming non repeating patterns. It's a shame really because the video looks almost like scaled up 720p and not 1080p.

Looking at the comparisons again, wow are they overexposing the D800 at night and seriously underexposing the 5DmkIII.

 

[Daniel Flather]

Looking at the comparisons again, wow are they overexposing the D800 at night and seriously underexposing the 5DmkIII.

Yes, and the D800 is still significantly noisier than the 5D3.

 

[psolberg]

Looking at the comparisons again, wow are they overexposing the D800 at night and seriously underexposing the 5DmkIII.

Yes, and the D800 is still significantly noisier than the 5D3.

yup. while in stills the difference is very little, in video, there is no question the 5D3 is very very good.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

Man, in the low light footage, the D800 looks pathetic ISO1600+. How can it look so good at still and so bad at video?

How? Because the 5D3 samples the entire sensor for video and stills while the D800 samples the entire sensor for stills but samples only 1/3rd of the sensor for video (tosses it 2 out of every three photons it collects when it does video by only reading one out of every three lines across the sensor).

So D800 has 1.5-2 stops worse SNR at any ISO than the 5D3 (for video). And only maybe 2/3rd of a stop better ISO at 100 (vs closer to 3 for stills) and already worse DR than the 5D3 by ISO800, if not earlier, and 1.5-2 stops worse DR for video ISO1600+.

The reading 1 in 3 lines also means it has much worse color moire and a bit worse aliasing. The do grab greater than 1920x1080 video and carefully downsample to 1920x1080 and don't apply a strong AA filter in processing beforehand so it grabs a bit more details than the 5D3 (but it's still no detail champ) and it also grabs some false details too.

They need to add zebra stripigin, focus peaking and a true 1920x1080 crips 2x2 samples 1.6x crop mode to the 5D3 video if they don't want to blow it all (C300-level will be hard to compete and they won't be any sort of champions there, the 5D3-level was there claim to fame, so cripplng it to help their cinema line is really, really dumb IMO).