Technically it was a challenge. Low light, multiple cameras (Nikon D600 and Canon HF S200) which required matching color and sensitivity.
What worked:
- Limiting video AGC on Canon HFS200 to 10db, sometimes even to 6 or 3db. Zebra pattern helps a lot! I wish Nikon D600 had it.
- Nikkor 24-85 proved to be a good video lens! AF was almost silent. Used it at 35mm, F5.6 for wide shots.
- Sonya did a good job operating D600 - I used a lot of her slow pans instead of my close shots - I do have a tendency to rush - need to slow it down.
- Sony Vegas 12 Pro multi-track editing proved to be very efficient. Loved it!
- Sony Vegas 12 Pro color-matching plugin is awesome!
- Connecting recorder to video camera offered no tangible benefits. I set the camera audio level manually. That of the recorder was on auto. I still used sound file from the recorder. Video camera track was adequate.
- Setting DSLR and camcorder sensitivity to the same level was tough. I had D600 ISO on 1600 to avoid high noise. It proved to be too much although histogram of a shot I took seemed to be adequate. I wish zebra was there on Nikon.
- DSLR was set on constant AF with face recognition. Worked OK although on few occasions focus was on a wrong person. Call it operator error.
- My efforts to set custom white balance on both HF S200 and D600 failed. the Scene light had so many colors the balance on D600 and HFS200 never matched. Next time I will just set it to one Kelvin value.
- Overall I am not happy with D600 footage. To prepare I read these reviews and was concerned about noise and moire. Yet the resulting footage lacks...dynamic range. I see blobs of colors with not enough details (when compared to HF S200!) in either highlights or shadows. This makes no sense. At all. Oh and I forgot to reset picture style to totally neutral - I think I had it on Standard, but the effect could not be that bad!
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