Nikon D7000 Vastly Improves Video over the D300s – Less Rolling Shutter

I picked up a Nikon D7000 just after the holidays and have found it to be a vast improvement over the D300s – at least as far as video is concerned. For stills the D300s still feels a bit more “pro” level, with a faster mechanism, larger frame, and a bit heavier feel.

The D7000 shoots 1080p h.264 encoded video at 24 frames per second. It can step down to 720p and lower frame rates as well. It is light years beyond the D300s / D90 movie mode, which shot only 720p using a motion JPEG codec.

My biggest complaint with the D300s was the rolling shutter. While extreme movements will still result in noticeable rolling shutter issues (something no DSLR is immune from so far), the “jelly effect” from going handheld is largely gone. Here’s a video I shot completely handheld with a 50mm 1.8 lens. Select the 1080p resolution and go full screen:

Here’s another spontaneous handheld shot from NASA’s last launch of Space Shuttle Discovery. We had an opportunity to watch the astronauts be driven out to the launchpad shortly before liftoff. This would have looked like mush on the D300s given all of the motion:

Low light has also vastly improved in this camera both for stills and video. Check out this time lapse I shot alaunch complex 39A on the eve of Discovery’s final flight:

And you can’t beat a locked down shot. I combined footage from a bunch of cameras below, but the close up shots of liftoff were shot with the D7000:

Nikon fans can rejoice that we’ve finally caught up with our Canon rivals on video. People can nitpick over the video quality from one camera to the next, but the D7000 truly is a cinema-quality video device on par with the 5D Mark II and other Canon SLRs.