Here is a short video clip from some footage I shot with the Nikon D90 during a rehearsal. I’ll be working one of the three video cameras for the live concert recording next week. I won’t be using the D90 for that though, I’ll be shooting a HVX200 with a P2 card.
The D90 is an interesting animal. You can get some really great looks from the camera and the right lenses but it is very limited. The 5 minute recording limit per clip is normally not a problem when you have a planned shoot, but for something that has to be shot in one take like this rehearsal, it gets to be a little annoying having to work around this. I was using it for about an hour and a half and it definitely was getting pretty hot, but still kept going.?The lack of manual controls is also something I just have to accept and try to make the best of.
I used a tripod and video head most of the time. The lighting levels were very low and came from available light through a bank of windows and tungsten room lights. Nothing fancy here…it was a rehearsal! I shot a gray card to get a color balance in camera and it did a very good job. For this video though, I wanted something a little edgier and played with the colors a little in Final Cut.
The sound from the little mono mic on the D90 is ok and useful for syncing but in a high sound pressure situation such as this rehearsal, it is unusable. Instead I used audio courtesy of a live recording by Darcel Walker who will be doing the sound recording for the concert video. He was using 4 wireless lav mics for this rehearsal. I didn’t process the audio at all and only gave a few tweaks to levels and panning.?