On our last film my crew-slash-actors and I joked about our total lack of equipment as we dreamed about all the high tech gear we would like to ideally shoot a film. The conversation led to one of us declaring if we had any less equipment, we would be making a film without a video camera. Well, thanks to Nikons' spectacular new D90 model, we can say we did. And what an interesting process it was. After graduating from the Vancouver Film School I wanted to create a number of short films as preparation for a feature length heist film that myself and Rick McEachern had written. We decided to use what modest gear we had and submit some films to Filmaka.com as part of their monthly themed competitions. When I say modest, I mean we shot our first two films on a five year old Sony Handicam that was only 500 dollars new and has taken countless hits from errant basketballs leaving it without a reliable viewfinder. Robert Rodriguez would be proud. This DV cam was a far cry from the Arriflex SRs and broadcast quality Sony DSRs I had become accustomed to in film school.TextFloat right

My three man-team of Rick McEachern, Edan Marshall and myself, have been drooling shamelessly over still images of the up-and-coming RED cameras, namely the Scarlet which is due out in early 2009. With this device blasting to the top of our must have list we thought any films we do between now and then will either be "Handicam 'Specials' or shot on borrowed equipment. Certainly, we did not expect to be shooting a film on a still camera. This was until Bill Wilby of Contact Photo Arts told us about the D90 and kindly offered to let us try it for Septembers' competition entry.TextFloat left

The shipping date of the camera in relation to the competition deadline left us with an 'oh-so- generous' 36 hour window to prep, shoot, edit and publish a film based on a required theme. Septembers' theme was "The First Day". These themes are introduced to keep filmmakers on a level playing field as opposed to letting people submit past works that have months or years of work and finances put into them. We knew in advance that we would be using the D90 and from what we read we decided not to rely on the audio capabilities too much as we would have no idea how well the device could capture dialogue. The script we wrote used an internal monologue voice over to help lessen the reliance location audio. As it turned out the microphone and speaker combination were far more usable than expected. The lack of an audio input is a minor gripe but as the D90 is the first DSLR to shoot video and isn't intended as a go-to video camera, this is an understandable omission.TextFloat left

When we got to shooting, we were surprised by the simplicity of the D90's D-Movie feature. At first, it felt as though the feature may have been added as an afterthought, but after using it for a few test clips, we discovered the footage exceeded all of our expectations for both quality and ease of use within an editing workflow. Our arsenal featured a 1.8 50mm Nikon prime, a Nikon 18-70 and a 3.8 18-105 VR lens. We relied heavily on the short focal depth of the 50mm to drop the background off nicely while giving us as clear an image as possible. For some interior shots, we backed up and used the zooms at 18-35 to capture the room. The fall colors, wardrobe and precise white balance options combined to really show off the cameras capabilities, namely clarity and color representation.TextFloat left

Controlling brightness came down to balancing the ISO, using exposure compensation, and after shooting, we remembered that AE Lock would have been a great way to stop the camera from metering to the sky when we needed spot metering. Unfortunately, the D90 will only use matrix metering when in movie mode, so 'tricking' it into metering the chosen subject can be a bit of a learning experience. Perhaps when we have more than 36 caffeine-fueled hours to complete a film we shall employ this method. The latitude of the camera is evident in the dinner scene in the film as it was lit using three candles and two low powered practical lamps.TextFloat left

While we would typically use a white card to balance, we felt the presets would give others a good idea of what to expect from the D90. The number of options under the white balance menu is impressive. Initially we had intended to use the in camera monochrome setting for flashback scenes but we weren't positive if the scenes were going to play as such in the final edit so the black and white scenes were done using Adobe Premiere's filters.TextFloat left

At 1280 x 720 I expected to be juggling a handful of SD cards throughout the shoot, but as it turned out, we filled just half of an eight GB chip. These four GB's got us roughly 35 minutes of raw footage giving us a healthy 10:1 shooting ratio for the three minute film.

The Motion jpeg format proved to be simple to use as the clips are obviously separated and ready to be imported instantly. The fact that we did not have to wait for an analog capture from tape in real-time turned out to be a lifesaver as our deadline loomed.TextFloat left

To edit the footage I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 which had no problem importing and conforming the material. With the project settings set to 720p and 24 fps, the footage was easy to scrub and manipulate. I out put the film at its native 24p which I feel gave it a very nice look while emulating the frame rate of conventional 35mm cinema. Maintaining an acceptable field of focus requires a sharp eye but the phenomenal LCD screen seemed to work great as we found only one shot in our raw footage that was a touch on the soft side yet still quite usable. Again, given our timeframe this could easily have been an oversight on our part. The lack of continuous auto focus while in movie mode may bother the average user but any filmmaker will be right at home even if they just crash focus to the subject.TextFloat right

Overall the D90 was a surprisingly adept camera that could add a nice video element to a still 'photogs' kit or act as a serviceable camera for family events. Even for a competition short film this camera performed admirably. It is best suited to shorter clips in controlled environments or heavy post audio projects due to the minimal audio capabilities, but if you want to dabble with stellar visuals accented by an array of all available Nikon lenses, the D90 works wonderfully.TextFloat left