Looks awesome, doesn’t it? Makes the D800 look like it excels at shooting sports and time lapse videos of cityscapes and exotic locations, right? Makes it seem like the D800 is a vital tool to have in your filmmaker production kit, right? Makes you want a D800 no matter the price, right?
Whoops.
Note the shot at 2:13 lines up with the Nikon promo video’s 0:18 mark. What makes Nikon’s blunder even more entertaining is the fact that the video also included footage that wasn’t even shot on a dSLR, such as the snowboarding action shots which are lifted from the film, ‘The Art of Flight’, and are even featured in that film’s trailer (beware NSFW language):
Note the shot at 1:36, which lines up with 0:50 in Nikon’s video, which is then followed by a shot of a Canon dSLR. Also, the shot at 2:30 lines up with 0:52 in Nikon’s video. Produced over a year ago, there’s no way the D800 could have been used to make this film. In fact, if you check out ‘The Art of Flight’ website to see what cameras they used to produce the movie, Nikon isn’t even on the list! The above footage was most likely captured with the Phantom HD Gold camera, capable of shooting 1,052 frames per second in 1080p HD.
So that’s two separate, confirmed sources making up about 5 to 10 seconds of Nikon’s Bangkok video, which ultimately begs the question:
Is the D800, or any Nikon dSLR camera, actually responsible for any of the footage in the D800 promotional highlight real being used to sell the D800’s cinematography skills?