Nikon D90 At A Glance Review

Nikon D90

The $950 Nikon D90 was announced in August of 2008 to replace the Nikon D80 camera.  The Nikon D90 largely builds on the successful D80 body with several very important upgrades – HD Movie mode, Live View, built-in sensor cleaning, and a 3 inch 920k pixel display.  The D90 inherits the Live View, sensor cleaning, and 3 inch display from its big brother; the professional grade D300.   The HD movie mode debuted on the Nikon DSLR line with the D90 and is not currently available on any of the higher end Nikon DSLR’s.  So, if you buy a D90 you will be getting a feature which is unavailable on the D300, D700, D3 and D3X which cost thousands of dollars more.  That is pretty cool!

Note: Expect that Nikon will be adding HD movie mode to their higher end DSLR line shortly.  The rumored D300s will likely be coming out within the next weeks with HD video functionality.

Are the new features useful?
Yes!  Absolutely.  As the DX sensor size starts reaching the pixel limit of ~13-15 million where noise becomes difficult to control because of the shrinking pixel size Nikon and Canon are having to find other ways to differentiate their offerings.  We’ve all noticed the plethora of new features that have been added to the D80/D90 line in an attempt to motivate purchases when resolution really isn’t increasing significantly.  Some of these features are of borderline value to the serious photographer while others are really nothing more than marketing fluff.  I’ll cut through the hype and show you which features you should care about in this review.

Key Nikon D90 Information

Key New Features for Model Line 720p HD Movie Mode Live View Built-in Sensor Cleaning 3 inch 920k pixel LCD Display 12.3 Megapixel CMOS Sensor 4.5 Frames Per Second

Target Market Prosumer – High end hobbyist photographer Predicted Model Replacement Date August 2010

Price: $950

 New Features that Matter
720p HD Movie Mode, Built-in Sensor Cleaning, Live View and the 3 inch LCD screen are all new features that really can help you shoot better photographs or save you serious time.  The 12.3 megapixel CMOS sensor are 4.5 fps are great improvements over the D80 – but 95% of photographers will not notice the difference between the 10 megapixel CCD D80 sensor and the 12.3 megapixel CMOS D90 sensor; and almost no one will notice the difference between 3.5 fps and 4.5 fps.

720p HD Movie Mode
HD Movie capability will be very valuable for a number of prosumer photograpers – this feature alone makes this camera worth the upgrade cost to me.  Carrying multiple devices around for shooting still pictures and shooting video just isn’t a good use of space and weight when the devices can be combined in to a single high performance device.  I’ve already got premium glass for my DSLR, why not use it for my videos?  With the explosion of HD video sharing via YouTube this feature allows you to capture motion and sounds to create an experience of “being there” that sometimes can’t be accomplished with still photography.   That being said, the D90 video functionality is clearly first generation – the length of your videos are limited to several minutes, and their is no first class access to turn on video mode.  You must open the menu on the LCD screen and select video mode.  This is a big disappointment to me, and makes it clear that Nikon still considers video more of a fringe feature than a mainline scenario.  Hopefully these limitations will be rectified in the D300s.

Built in Sensor Cleaning
This feature speaks for itself – yes it is important, no it isn’t perfect; but it is a heck of a lot better than trying to clean off spots from pictures using post-processing.  Any feature that reduces the amount of post-processing is valuable and this feature definitely fits that bill.

3 inch 920k pixel LCD Display
This is the feature of the Nikon D90 that I am most excited about and find most useful.  This gorgeous display allows the photographer to know immediately whether the scene was captured as envisioned.  The depth of color, richness of detail, and clarity this screen provides is unsurpassed.  Instant shot verification with this level of detail and one or two zoom levels ensures that what you see on your camera is almost what you’ll see at home on your 24 inch monitor.  I can’t emphasize enough how big of a difference the screen size makes in your ability to quickly determine the quality of an image.  A screen of this size quickly shows you any blurriness or lack of clarity in the picture, allowing you to adjust and take another picture.  In the old D70 days I can’t tell you the number of times I took a picture which looked crystal clear on the small 1.8 inch screen, but was too blurry to be blown up beyond a 4×6 when examined at home on the 20 inch monitor.  Never again will you come away thinking you got crisp pictures, only to discover they are all unusablely out of focus or blurry. 

Final Word
Overall the Nikon D90 is an excellent camera for the amateur photographer with some great new features like HD Video, Sensor cleaning, and a 3 inch LCD display that set it apart from the Nikon D80 and Nikon D200.