"Oh, and, not that it matters much or many ppl care,. Nikon is woefull for serious timelapse, they cant handle bulb ramping or lens twist, that pretty much wipes them out for that. Canon is the king there.[/QUOTE]"
I didn't understand this. What is bulb ramping and lens twist? Never heard of that before?
I just looked up bulb ramping so its being able to change settings midstream in a time lapse. Yes that could be handy.
The only reference for lens twisting is to lenses unscrewing. Is that what you mean?
Or do you mean full aperture control with this lens twist trick:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonysph...hs/3094873460/
That's pretty funny that Nikon is useless for time lapse though.
Alex won the Canary Island International astro competition with a time lapse with a Nikon D700 with a Nikon 14-24mm lens. Also the Malin awards the year before last. He gets regular APODs with it.
Last I checked the earlier Nikon models have the superior high ISO low light performance for a long time and its something Canon obviously have worked towards improving with the 5D3 whilst Nikon has chased Canon's resolution advantage. Its funny really.
I checked the specs for the Nikon D800 and time lapse and video and it appears (its not totally clear) that you have full manual control over aperture and exposure.
"full manual control of shutter speed/aperture/ISO, smooth aperture changes (when using HDMI out), built-in time lapse movie making, and index marking. The D800 allows FX or DX crop video, but not the 2.7x crop that the D4 does. You can capture 1920x1080 stills while shooting video. "
The time lapse function is part of the video mode of the camera. I wonder though if this is the same thing or if the outputs would be acceptable as some shoot time lapse night shots in RAW. So if the time lapse of the Nikon is part of the video mode then Nikon RAW file output may not be available. But it doesn't need an intervalvometer which is a plus. As no cameras are out in the public yet these sorts of details are not 100% clear.
Here's an example:
http://vimeo.com/36360872
I just read more - time lapse is limited to 20 minutes. That's no good for astro. Hmmm. Maybe you have a point there Fred.
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr...features02.htm
This time lapse clearly shows no change in aperture or exposure control as the sun sets the very thing that Fred is referring to.
Greg.