Nikon V1 was great! ready for next hobby purchase - your thoughts?

[Tim Fraser]

Had huge fun with Nikon V1 and saw amazing quality output from Resolve Lite that resulted from the raw stills sequences.  

 

Now sold and although ML raw is hugely exciting looking at example footage, I'm put off both APS-C and even 5D full frame raw (iii is out of budget, ii even @ £800 body on eBay is pushing it and some mark ii bodies are going for a fair bit more recently) because I would be drawn to raw 1:1 crop modes and on the bodies I could afford even 5D ii, getting wide enough is problematic because crop modes obviously use a smaller part of the sensor.

 

While I did enjoy playing with Resolve lite on my neff->tiff converted V1 sequences, wouldn't mind for the coming year enjoying native footage with as good colour as can be had as it comes out of camera in a suitable form factor and concentrating on many of the other aspects of video making, while collecting a few Nikkor or Canon FD prime lenses.  I could do with building up my editing and story making skills more than colour work just now :-)

 

I'll be shooting people mostly starting with family, no paid work in the foreseeable future. The BMPCC I don't believe is for me as it is a bit over budget, and needs extra bits; while I would love pro-res files, I've realised it may be best to start with lens choices first and camera second and that Sony/Panasonic codecs are very good.

 

Under consideration to make use of primes with adapters:

 

1) Panasonic G6.  I totally get that sensor size is not the only measure of video quality, but I'm not sure I want to deal with the m4/3 crop factor as I'm keen to use some of the faster Nikkor and Canon FD prime lenses and still get as wide as possible.  (s/h GH2 also a contender here)

 

2) Sony NEX-7 I expect could pick up on ebay about £450 to £500.  Will get a bit wider with same lens than the G6.

 

Some of my shooting may be monopod, but a lot will be hand held and there will be a fair amount of indoor shooting and of course with primes focusing will be manual.

 

Main dilemma is sensor size?  The newer camera with the sharper video has the smaller sensor :-(