Does the Ninja work with DSLR cameras?
The Ninja is ready to record from any camera that supplies a good-quality, clean HDMI signal. But most DSLR and other digital “still” cameras don’t do this. Instead, they tend to put viewfinder overlays in the video image.
This means that the HDMI output will be a duplicate of the viewfinder on the camera, complete with histograms, red circles, white squares and all kinds of other “helpful” data. This is information you want to see in the viewfinder, but not in your actual, recorded images.
We have seen this issue on all of the Canon DSLR cameras and on DSLR cameras from most other manufacturers. The only DSLR-type camera that we know does not do this is the Panasonic Lumix GH2, which does have a clean output in certain modes. Some users, particularly in Europe, are reporting great results with the GH2. (3:2 Pulldown removal is required to recover 24p footage whereas 50i and 60i modes are beautiful and ready to use).
So connect the HDMI cable from your camera to your television and check to see if there are any viewfinder objects in the picture. Make sure that there are no cropped areas, top and bottom, or left and right.
Most TVs do not show the entire picture: there may be issues in the image at the extreme edges that you would not see on your TV. If the TV picture looks good to you, then that’s what the Ninja will record.
The Ninja can only record what it is given, so it is very important that you check the quality of video your camera is outputting through the HDMI lead before you commit to buying a Ninja.
Please note that we are getting excellent results from the vast majority of dedicated video cameras. Your Ninja dealer will let you try your camera to see if it works with the Ninja.
DSLR USERS TAKE NOTE!
- You may have to crop your images to remove viewfinder information that appears in the HDMI output.
- Your camera may reduce the resolution of your HDMI images by cropping or resizing it without proper filtering to remove aliasing, resulting in unpleasant jagged diagonal edges.
- PLEASE test the output from your camera by plugging the HDMI lead into a monitor and watching in “LiveView” or “Record” mode.
- Do NOT do this test in the camera’s “Play” mode, you will be watching footage that has been already compressed and stored on internal camera media.
- The Ninja can only record the signal it is given. It is ready to record clean video from any DSLR that supplies it.