I have been playing with a Nikon D70s for stop-frame work. The reason for testing this was to free up a Pansonic HVX-200 Hi Def camera - the Nikon is roughly 1/4 theprice, yet has greater control over depth of field etc. I have been very pleased with the results.
The important thing to realise is the D70s is a very hgh definition camera, using a 3008*2000 image area ... HiDef TV uses 1920*1080. Using the Nikon large image either permits reduction (and therefore increased resolution) or the ability to pan and scan in After Effect, Combustion or whatever.
There are technical consideration, such as using manual settings for White balance and exposure settings, but generally the procedure has been without too many hiccups.
The biggest advantage for Timelapse is Nikon have some software called Capture 4.4, which permits a PC to be attached to the camera via a USB cable - all of the principle camera controls are available directly from the PC interface - including manual exposure settings, white balance.
For the Time-lapse works, I have used recommnedations by Oxford Scientic Films ... if you need to ask who OSF is, you're new to specialst film making. OSF say record in RAW format, then convert to TIFF for the video media render. This makes for a 35meg image file so 20 second sequence kinda eats up hard disc space big time.
But what the hell, the results are in the OMG catagory.
Rhoel
DSLR for HD stop-frame/time-lapse
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