First Impressions of my D3300 - Running udates coming

ChipThome

New member
This morning the mailman dropped the D3300 that I ended up with from ebay. The lady seller was keeping the new 18-55 lens and sold me the rest of the kit. The color is gray which I kinda like. Shutter count tonight is 882.

First impression as I took the body out of the box was it felt really light and had a weight almost like a toy camera might have. I weighed it and my D5200 both as bare bodies with no batteries. The D3300 comes in at 4 ounces less, 14.2 vs. 18.2.

The battery door and the latch for that door don't feel nor function like I would expect from Nikon. I find myself having to latch the battery door instead of it latching itself once it's closed.

I tried picking a white balance from the list of settings available and none seemed to get as close as Auto White Balance did. There are no Kelvin settings for a custom White Balance. I miss that from my D5200 and other cameras I have had.

Unlike the D5200 if you select RAW+Fine for your picture quality setting, the option to select image size gets grayed out. You are then stuck with large 6000X4000 JPEG images which are about 13mb each.

That's all I got to so far. Will update as the investigation continues.
 
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ChipThome

New member
Today I got outside to compare the D3300 to the D5200 for video. I had both on the same settings, used the same lens, same tripod, same approx. location....everything about as close to same/same as I could make it. I wasn't expecting what I got !!!

 

ChipThome

New member
Hi Don.... the goal today was to set up both as close as I could to each other to see how well they matched and if I could cut between the two for a video shoot I have coming up. What I was hoping for was equal imagery from both cameras, or at least close enough that the typical youtube viewer wouldn't notice. If they aren't the same I have to jack one around to get it close enough, or tear my hair out in pp trying to make them look the same.
 
Hi Don.... the goal today was to set up both as close as I could to each other to see how well they matched and if I could cut between the two for a video shoot I have coming up. What I was hoping for was equal imagery from both cameras, or at least close enough that the typical youtube viewer wouldn't notice. If they aren't the same I have to jack one around to get it close enough, or tear my hair out in pp trying to make them look the same.

I was in TV before I retired. The trick is to not match the shots. Different angle, different zoom and you would not be able to tell near as much. In real life you would have no reason to sit cameras side by side with the same shot. Do a test that matches the video shoot that you are planning to do.
 
I my earlier days of TV in the 70s we did not have the fancy editing gear that we have now. We would shoot three or four cameras and go back and lay down the main shot complete with audio. Then we would go back and sync the second camera up with the main video we already laid down and edit video only with the shot we wanted. same with the 3rd or 4th camera. When we got through we had a video that looked and sounded like it was from a switcher done live. The point is that in those days the cameras no matter how hard we tried never matched exactly but in the end they always looked good.
 

Mark F

Senior Member
Which one did you think was the closest to the actual scene? The 3300 looked a little over exposed and the 5200 looked a little under.


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ChipThome

New member
I just got my daughter (the Editing Queen) in here and we both agree each of these are shooting too cool in these clips. So the colors are hinked toward the blue and lost the warmth that they really have. Although both seem to be equally hinked, so that's a good thing, maybe ??? :eek:

Mark, I think you nailed it on both just a bit off. If the D3300 was closer on the correct White Balance, it was probably the better of the two.

Don, I hear you about being able to cheat a bit in a multicam shoot. When I first got into amateur video stuff, it was shooting bar bands, lots of lights and decent size stages. Back then we got up to shooting 4 cams and as long as it said Panasonic on it, I was good with having it in my gear bag. I've been out of it for a bit and going to shoot DSLR this time. It's for our chiro/friend and I think it's just 4 people and a small stage. We'll most likely shoot one locked down wide and use the other for B roll either on tripod or flycam. My reason for doing this side by side comparison was to see if colors and exposure would be close enough. The colors, if I white balance better will work just fine. I can see though I need to work the exposure a bit so there's not such, IMO, as stark a difference.
 
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