By site editor Dan Chung:
One of the main concerns I had when testing video on the Nikon D800 was moire in some images. This is almost certainly the result of the way Nikon engineers are binning pixels to downscale an image to 1080P from a much higher resolution 36MP sensor. This moire patterning was also a common feature of shots from the Canon 5D mkII and something that many DSLR shooters are used to contending with.
One solution that some 5D mkII shooters have been using is an Optical low pass filter from Mosaic engineering which fits inside the camera in front of the sensor. The filter is effectively doing a controlled blur of the image to combat moire and it works quite well. The downside is that the backfocus of lenses is thrown off by having the filter in place – close focussing may be lost and lenses focus past infinity. Even so it is a sacrifice many shooter have felt was worth making.
When I tested the D800 I speculated that a similar filter could solve the moire issues – now several weeks later I have been contacted by Jacob Fenn to say he has been shooting with a prototype Mosaic Engineering filter that does just that. He has posted several examples on his blog and we have reproduced a few here with permission.
Jacob told me that the Mosaic would soon have an updated filter with even better results.
This all looks very promising and I am keen to see what a D800 can produce when this filter is combined with external HDMI recording using a Ninja 2 or other external recorder.
