Having photographed bands for going on 20 years, I’m amazed by the leaps of performance between each generation of new camera. The above video of Calabrese performing their hit single “Vampires Don’t Exist” was shot at the Brighton Bar with a Nikon D4s. For the record, I am not a videographer, nor do I claim to be; however, I majored in video communications in college and held my fair share of giant video cameras over my shoulder. To think that today’s digital still cameras can produce video and sound quality on par with anything I used in the VHS days is mind-boggling.
While Nikon got schooled by Canon when the photo/video hybrid trend started, the black and gold stepped up its game with video quality comparable to what Canon is offering. The Calabrese video is shot handheld with just the onboard microphone manually set to just below the red. While I’m not a professional, I think the quality is pretty sick.
My only complaint is that I can’t shoot for more than a half hour, so I can’t use my D4s or D810 for Mai Tai T.V. A lot of noise has been made of the fact that the upcoming Nikon D5 can only shoot 4K video in three-minute increments, I’ve yet to find any specs on the length of time available for 1080p video. At the moment, I just can’t justify the data space and processing strength I would need to shoot and edit 4K files. Besides, seeing me and Hambone and me at that level of high definition has got to be frightening.
