thom

Several comments: It's doubtful that DxO's numbers apply in any meaningful way to video, as there's a demosaic being run. Moreover, people should look at ALL the numbers. The D800 may have similar noise levels to the D4, but by ISO 1600 it drops a full stop of dynamic range to the D4. Some people will value DR over noise, some vice versa. Pixel sampling shouldn't change the dynamic range numbers as you suggest. What does change is the outputted dynamic range after processing (by Digic in Canon, by EXPEED in Nikon). In the Nikon EXPEED system, video goes through the same Picture Controls as stills do. You can definitely crunch the range by using the wrong settings (and the camera default settings are the wrong settings, IMHO). It's going to take me awhile to figure out optimal Picture Controls for the D4 and D800 video, but I'll bet that they start with Neutral, not Standard. And I bet I lower the Contrast, cancel the Active D-Lighting, and a few other settings. The problem you point out in red is something you'd better get used to, as all the makers are beginning to do the same thing now: they're lowering the color information (via the Bayer filtration) in order to increase the signal to noise ratio. What that means is that demosaiced streams (JPEGs and video) are getting color BOOSTs in them, much like turning up the saturation. This has gross implications on colors that are near the channel or gamut limits. The problem is also present in the blue channel, but at a much lower level. The DX crop is not 1.6 as you suggest, it's 1.5. Technically, both those numbers are rounded, and the actual numbers are a bit further apart than .1. There's another small difference in how Canon and Nikon approach getting 16:9 from a 3:2 sensor. The difference is enough to make your focal length calculations a few mm off, so be careful if you're mixing systems and trying to match coverage. A D800E shouldn't produce more moire in video than a D800. The moire is not coming from pixel level production as it is in stills, it's coming from line/pixel sampling, which is the same between the two cameras. The HDMI out has issues, it appears. The audio doesn't appear synced to the video properly. Other than that, it's extremely impressive when set and recorded correctly. Not sure the Ninja is the best way to record the clean HDMI. I'm still trying to decipher exactly what you can get out of the HDMI, but I think 4:2:2 is actually a downgrade from what's on the connector. Unfortunately, I don't really have the right equipment handy to test to see what the max I can get from it is, but it may be 4:4:4. My current breakout and SSD can't keep up with the highest data stream that I can send down the HDMI, which tells you just how much info is coming down that pipe. Thom Hogan, photographer and writer [url=http://www.bythom.com]www.bythom.com[/url]  [url=http://www.sansmirror.com]www.sansmirror.com[/url]