Article Summary:

The Nikon D4 has been approved (all links are to pdfs of the tests) by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for use as a broadcast camera. The EBU testing has superseded the BBC test. It is the first SLR camera to do so. Contrary to a report in the Nikon Pro magazine, Wetpixel has received confirmation from Nikon that the D800 did not actually pass the test.

The D4 is said to give 13 stops exposure range as opposed to 12 on the D800. Both cameras performed best at 1080p recording and were deemed “not good” at 720p. The tests concluded that both can be used on a ISO value up to 6,400, rolling shutter is at a minimum and they have cameras good color performance. It is interesting to note that Canon also submitted a pre-production version of the 5D to the test, but it failed due to problems with its anti-aliasing filter.