video settings for nikon d5100

stefanocps

Hi
i amstefano, from italy
I am a new owner of this machine , bought mostly for video
I am doing practice a lot but still have lot of doubt on how to get the most of the quality, with settings, manual or aperture priority, auto iso ecc...
Often i come out with too much noise even if is not very dark
I use normally manual focus
can anyone give me a good info on the best way to set nikon for video?
thanks a lot

Ironheart

Stefano, we need to know a bit more about what you are trying to do. Are you indoors? outdoors? Day? Night? Also what lenses are you using. For instance, indoors at night you will need a pretty fast lens (f/2 or less) to keep your ISO low enough and your shutter speed fast enough to make reasonable video. Or you need supplemental lighting.

If I were shooting indoors at night using "normal" lighting, I would use my 50mm 1.8 lens set to f/2, speed 1/60 and ISO 800. This will produce a "normal" exposure. I will point out that f/2 is a very shallow DOF and manually focusing will be somewhat challenging in this situation. Also, ISO 800 may produce more noise than you want, so you may want to provide more light to be able to raise that up.

Outdoors, on a sunny day you will want to be at f/11, 1/60 ISO 100. Notice that I'm trying to keep you at 1/60. This is what most movies are filmed at (well, really 1/50th but who's counting), and produces the "correct" amount of motion blur. Anything slower will be just blurry, and anything faster starts to produce "stop motion" effects that are usually undesirable.

I must point out that these are very rough guidelines. If you are using a long lens, you will want perhaps a faster speed, or a really good tripod. Also lighting conditions can be very variable both indoors and out. You may want to consider "auto ISO". Real movies have amazingly tight control over lighting so that the camera is always set near "optimal" settings (f/4-f/8, ISO 100-200, speed 1/50-1/80), unless the director is going for specific effects.