Nikon D7100 video quality issues

[Mathew Mantas]

Heya guys, I'm green as grass and don't know much about filming. Apart from tutorials from Film Riot and Fenchel & Janisch. I got meself a brand new D7100 and I'm now thinking theres something wrong with the camera itself. Video is not sharp, it's muddy and it seems it have artifacts (?) too.
Here is an example of video shot with this camera. here are some examples






Image is flat 1/125 f1.8 iso 100 1080i 60fps It's pretty terrible at day, it's even worse at night
What could it be? How You call this distortion or whatever it is? Can I send the camera back to Nikon if I experience such things? Thanks in advance!!

 

[KmH]

What make/model of lens are you using?
Is f/1.8 the lens maximum aperture?

Most fast lenses need to be stopped down a couple of stops from their maximum aperture before they get to the start of their sharp focus range of lens apertures. Stopping down even more usually increases focus sharpness.
Two stops smaller lens aperture from f/1.8 is f/3.5.
3 stops is f/5.
4 stops is f/7.1.

What focus mode and focus area mode did you use?
If you haven't already, see steps 3 & 4 on page 153, and pages 155 and 156 of the D7100 user manual.
See page 168 regarding flicker, banding, moiré, distortion etc.
The D7100 has a rolling shutter instead of the preferred for moving camera/subject video, global shutter.

The shutter speed is set by the frame rate of the video - 60 fps.

Lots of people send perfectly working cameras back to Nikon because they lack the knowledge needed to tell that the issues they are having is user error.
That said, being mass produced consumer electronics some very small % of less than perfectly working Nikon cameras will be shipped from the factory.

 

[Mathew Mantas]

I use Nikkor 35mm 1:1.8G and Nikkor 18-105mm prime lenses.
I never go full aperture. With my 35mm I usually stay at around f/3.5.
I use manual focus. My videos are pretty static.
I use shutter speed x2 of my fps.
Thank You for instructions, i've reviewed them.
Do You think there is something wrong with the quality or it's just the thing in my head?
By the way
Thanks for lightning fast answer.

 

[dannylightning]

the videos do not look good to me. unfortunately i have only taken video with my kit lens so far and i have not idea how i had the settings, it was just a quick video test, it was crystal clear even in very low light. this was with a D5300 with the lens set to 18mm, the video was taken in my house and i just walked from room to room. i know i had it set to maximum quality and 1080 60 fps. i know when i changed the zoom of the lens the video got lousy for a second till it focused again.

60 fps is going to give you the best over all smoothness for moving objects. the more frames per second the smoother videos look.

not sure i was of any help but there you go

 

[runnah]

Image is flat 1/125 f1.8 iso 100 1080i 60fps It's pretty terrible at day, it's even worse at night
What could it be? How You call this distortion or whatever it is? Can I send the camera back to Nikon if I experience such things? Thanks in advance!!

Have you tried at 1080p?
Why are you shooting at 60fps?
Do you have any auto functions turned on?
Shooting at 1.8 is always tricky.
Using a filter?

Something id very wrong, that video looks terrible.

 

[Mathew Mantas]

Thanks for the answers guys! Really appreciate it.
Runnah, I shot at 60fps to get that smooth look, dannylighting mentioned
Well I tried shooting everything from 1080i/1080p and 24/25/30/50/60 fps. I still get that nasty distortion going on. How do You call it?
Dropbox - DSC_0958.MOV

This is really annoying and it really gets on my nerves :/ Pictures taken by the same camera doesn't look that bad.

 

[dannylightning]

OK i am back, i just played around with my camera for video, my buddy wants to start working out and not spend allot of time doing it so i decided to get the camera out and make a video for him to give him a good starting point. i viewed this video on my computer and i am now uploading it to you tube so he can see it.

here are my settings, 1920X1080p, 60 fps, movie quality high, manual movie settings off. so i guess the camera is calling most of the shots. video quality came out nice and clear over all i am quite happy with it. it was a bit grainy in the basement but i now see i can twist the wheel and it will change what appears to be the shutter speed and the ISO at the same time, i did notice wen i started recording the video for my frined the camera said the iso was at 4000 or something like that. i am not sure what changing the shutter speed does for video but as i turned the wheel i noticed no real difference on the second video i took ( just watching it on the camera screen ) but since the iso dropped down to 100 i would imagine i would have had less grain in the video if i had put it on my computer. over all lightning and brightness did not change as i turned the wheel. in the basement i think the highlights were a bit over bearing but there was a big florescent lights down there, my camcorder and point and shoot always looks to have strong highlights in the basement as well so that was probably just the lightning.

but the bottom line is the video came out pretty darn clear and looked better than the video i get in the basement with my other cameras just a bit more grain than usual but like i said i am pretty sure turning the wheel would have fixed the grain.

i also turned the manual settings on and the results were not as good, i dont really get the manual settings to be honest, it does not seem like it allows me to do much and what i saw when playing it back on the camera screen did not appear to be as good. i guess i need to read up on the manual movie settings.

i used my 18-200mm nikon 3.5f lens for this video i just took..

the quality of your video is definitely poor compared to mine, i mean i was down in a dark basement with horrible lighting and it turned out pretty descent. maybe try the manual settings and see how that works out, also if you have a different lens you may want to try that, i hear not all lenses are great for video but i dont know for sure. my old DSLR did not take video as far as i remember either that or i did not have any interest in recording video at the time so video on a DSLR is new to me. but i feel you should be getting much better video quality than you are. i bet it is the lens or camera setting. if not than i guess it could be a issue with the camera so you may have to do some trouble shooting here. i highly doubt its your memory card but you never know.

i assume you formatted the memory card in the camera before you used it, also if the memory card is slow it may have a hard time writing all that video data to the card and i hear that can kill your video quality.

so there are a few things to look at before you decide its a issue with the camera

 

[Mathew Mantas]

Wow such simple thing as memory card didn't pop up in my head! Thank You!
I'm using brand new SanDisk Ultra C10. I've formated it twice already through the DSLR menu when I was upgrading my firmware. But maybe it's too slow as it's marked as 30mb/s? Even when I shoot lowest res video and no sound I get same quality issues.
I have 3 lenses and I get same problem on all of them. I get even worse videos when I set DSLR on Auto. My phone can take better videos than that :/
Thanks again for Your answer!

 

[runnah]

Thanks for the answers guys! Really appreciate it.
Runnah, I shot at 60fps to get that smooth look, dannylighting mentioned
Well I tried shooting everything from 1080i/1080p and 24/25/30/50/60 fps. I still get that nasty distortion going on. How do You call it?
Dropbox - DSC_0958.MOV
View attachment 84428 View attachment 84429
This is really annoying and it really gets on my nerves :/ Pictures taken by the same camera doesn't look that bad.

Try 30 and 24 fps.
60fps is a lot of data and I am wondering if the camera is compensating.

Honestly I'd try every setting to see if it improves or not.

 

[Mathew Mantas]

I've tried it all. Video seems to have that weird posterise effect. If I find one setting which will improve quality dramatically then I'll be bound by it It's pretty darn heartbreaking

 

[runnah]

I've tried it all. Video seems to have that weird posterise effect. If I find one setting which will improve quality dramatically then I'll be bound by it It's pretty darn heartbreaking

Is there any sort if picture mode that is turned on? Like a preset style? Looks to me like everything is terribly desaturated and low contrast.

 

[Mathew Mantas]

Is there any sort if picture mode that is turned on? Like a preset style? Looks to me like everything is terribly desaturated and low contrast.

Nope. I have picture mode of flat image, but it looks the same :/

 

[bribrius]

the video on my 7100 isn't THAT bad. i have some of the iso issue and leave it in auto more now but other than that. I actually found 30 p s fine for what i do.

 

[runnah]

Nope. I have picture mode of flat image, but it looks the same :/

Well then I am stumped.

 

[dannylightning]

ok i did some reading last night at work., it looks like the cameras come set to PAL stock and the other settnig is NTSC not sure which one you need but i would make sure that is correct for the country you live in. than in the flicker setting for pal you want 50hz for ntsc you want 60hz. its comes set at auto default.. and you probably want to turn on manual movie settings

now when you are using 60 fps you want to set shutter speed to 1/120. for 30 fps set shutter speed to 1/60 so you double the number of FPS when you set shutter speed.


next is your ISO you want that as low as possible since higher iso ads more grain, i hear 1000 or lower works good on the D5300 any higher than 1000 will cause to much grain, i would assume its going to be the same for the D7100. and i am pretty sure it said 1,000, unless it was 10,000 but you can play around with it and see what happens.

now when it comes to F stop, a F stop number like F/1.8 is going to make allot of stuff out of focus and that could be causing the picture to be burly, using a number like F/11 should allow it to focus on more stuff and it should give you a crisp clear video,

so basically set your shutter speed according to the FPS you have chosen, than choose a F stop number probably between 8 and 15, ( that is where i would start) than adjust your iso to let in the right amount of light to get a proper exposure on the video


hope that helps.

also make sure you have not changed one of the color presets, in vivid, neutral, standard and all of those modes you can go in and adjust brightness, exposure, contrast and everything else. and you have to pick one of those modes so if the settings on the mode you have chosen have been changed that could be the problem.