Help with D7000

I need some advice - insight? To the problem I am having.

Got swindled on a D7000 when the sellers "Peach_photo" on ebay sold me a camera and did not let me know that it was a grey market cam. Meaning there is no manufacturer warranty for me at all and no help in case there was a problem.

Lesson learned.

Now, the camera issue I am having is quite strange. Very noisy video and pictures, even when at ISO 100-640 1080p at 24 fps shooting in a nice shade from trees in a sunset setting with plenty of light.

Does not matter what the setting was, if there was share at all, there is tons of noise in the image.

Even in light the colors and fine details are lost to the noise and the seemingly slightly off focus.

Looking for someone that could perhaps have an idea what I am dealing with here.

Here is one sample that I uploaded to Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBdrQcAVvi4&feature=youtu.be

Here is the second test, look at the growth on the rocks. Almost looks like they are blotched together you cannot see individual detail like it really was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13WOzHCqfV0&feature=youtu.be

Keep in mind, these are completely unaltered straight from the camera.

Thanks

Impossible to tell from these videos. The first on of is water so there is not going to be any detail to see. I don't see noise in it at all though. Second is not a lot better. I don't see the noise there either. It is a little out of focus though. Very narrow depth of field maybe. Shoot some normal video in the sun and see how it looks.

What mode are you shooting in? Automatic, Program or what?

How to the photos look?

Shooting all manual, perhaps the monitor I am using does not help. But on any device I can see the weird kind of blotchiness out of focus and noise.

Here is a gardening video I did for my cousin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL0htHFM9nc&list=UU208478ECji1rdkDDbB0vHQ

Do you notice the grainyish look and noise?

For example his beard, seems blotched together with a great lack of detail. I manually focused to the clearest I could get.

Put it on program and see how it does. You may be missing the exposure with Manual. Are you by any chance using spot metering?

Are you judging the video quality by the youtube uploads or the original files on your computer?

In order to get the best quality from youtube, you must select a higher quality using the little gear icon at the bottom right.

Yes, I am watching it in the 1080p on the little youtube quality gear.

Tell me what you think and see in the gardening video clip.

Thank you guys for the responses by the way. It is great to at least hear something.

Don, I have not really thought about doing anything with the metering cause I was using complete manual I didn't really think it mattered since I was adjusting the exposure myself.

You think that might be some of the problem?

What lens are you using? I am not seeing much wrong with that photo. I do question why you need ISO 1000 in that lighting situation or am I reading the numbers wrong?

No, I just deleted that it was kind of dumb for me to post that since it was not during me filming.

Did you take a look at the videos? What do you think of the gardening one?

Well I do not shoot video so I am not the best judge of what is acceptable but except for one small out of focus moment I did not see much wrong with the the video either. The sunlight was a little harsh but there must be ways of coping with that especially in post production. I think you camera is probably alright but of course it would have been better to have a USA model so you could have had it checked out more easily.

Have you checked the video quality of what came out of the camera on the your HD monitor? How is the quality? If it is fine, then there is a problem while uploading it to YouTube.

If you are going to downsize or process your video then there are a lot of artifacts which can creep up if the software is not good. For example I tried down sizing with Nikon Software and got horrible output. After a search on the net, I am now using "Handbrake"and that gives me clean output - as good as the input. Note that every time you edit , splice or add banners artifacts will creap in if software is bad.

The main wrong thing I see about your gardening video is the color balance that is off. Now this maybe could be taken care of in post processing, but it would be easier to make it right from the shoot. I didn't see noise that bothered me.

I don't see any problem on my iPhone, but I wanted to mention that any digital video camera is going to compress the video at least a bit. Maybe that is what you're seeing? I haven't done much video with my D7000, so I can't tell you where the settings are, if any.

I just watched the moss+waterfall video and I see what you're saying. But here's the thing with digital video: It's not a set of images put together one after the other, certainly not at the D7000 level at least.

Think of it as a data stream that can only contain a certain amount of data. Since you had a lot of motion in that video, the camera had to compress elsewhere and there went your detailed moss. The compression works by seeing what changes the least between frames so your eye is least likely to notice it, and the compression algorithm favors the movement, figuring that's the most important thing (which it usually is).

Theoretically, increasing the data stream size would give you more data and MIGHT be enough to resolve that moss. As I said above, I don't know what settings the D7000 has for video and whether it's adjustable.

I'm still kind of surprised that people use a DSLR this way. I mean, I guess it works, but if I were doing video like this I'd get out my dedicated video camera and not worry about it shutting down after 20 minutes and all (which the D7000 will). At ~$200, it was also a lot cheaper than a DSLR + lenses, too, and much easier to hold one-handed, being designed for that purpose. On the other hand, I wouldn't have access to my different lenses, either, so if I wanted to do extreme wide angle or something then I guess the DSLR would be my choice.