Nikon D90

Zabimaru · Oct 1, 2008

Okay, what do you think of this camera? Do you think it is worth the money compared to say a d80 or d60?

epp_b · Oct 1, 2008

It depends on what you need. The D90 has features like Active D-lighting (I think the D60 has this, though) and absurdly-good high ISO performance which can greatly improve image quality in certain situations. Being a second-generation Nikon, it is better than either of the other two but, of course, more expensive.

Personally, I think the video capture and live view features are gimmicks. I wouldn't take them into consideration when buying a camera.

Major flaw with the D90: you can't connect it to your computer as a USB MSC where your computer simply recognizes it as a hard drive. Currently, the yuck PTP protocol is the only option. Hopefully, Nikon will fix outright bad defect with a firmware update. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole until they do.

sultan · Oct 1, 2008

epp_b said:
It depends on what you need. The D90 has features like Active D-lighting (I think the D60 has this, though) and absurdly-good high ISO performance which can greatly improve image quality in certain situations. Being a second-generation Nikon, it is better than either of the other two but, of course, more expensive.

Personally, I think the video capture and live view features are gimmicks. I wouldn't take them into consideration when buying a camera.

Major flaw with the D90: you can't connect it to your computer as a USB MSC where your computer simply recognizes it as a hard drive. Currently, the yuck PTP protocol is the only option. Hopefully, Nikon will fix outright bad defect with a firmware update. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole until they do.

I would't worry about the protocol thing much. Live view is a gimmick but the video capability is actually really good and useful (much better than a camcorder for many purposes).

reg · Oct 1, 2008

epp_b said:
The D90 has features like Active D-lighting

Word is "Active D-Lighting" is just 1/3 to 2/3 stop of underexposure depending on lighting conditions. Any truth to this, Nikonians?

Mitch1640 · Oct 1, 2008

i would like someone to tell me why when i looked at the dpreview reviews the d40 tested with lower noise then the d90 did.

Zabimaru · Oct 2, 2008

epp_b said:
Major flaw with the D90: you can't connect it to your computer as a USB MSC where your computer simply recognizes it as a hard drive. Currently, the yuck PTP protocol is the only option. Hopefully, Nikon will fix outright bad defect with a firmware update. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole until they do.

why is that a big deal? Wouldn't you just take out the sd card and slot it into your computer instead of hooking the entire camera up to a usb? That's what i tend to do already, having the entire camera hooked up takes up a lot of space and is too troublesome i.m.o

josealb · Oct 2, 2008

reg said:
Word is "Active D-Lighting" is just 1/3 to 2/3 stop of underexposure depending on lighting conditions. Any truth to this, Nikonians?

I dont know who said that but if you give it a try you can easily realize that it's not as simple as that. What active D-Lighting does is expanding the dynamic range of the image. That is like creating an HDR image only more subtle (although you can select it to be more noticeable). What this does is light up the darker areas and darker the burned areas. Of course it's not perfect as completely burned areas are irrecuperable and so are black areas but it is a nice post-processing addition.
In my opinion, however this option isn't worth having if the camera isn't able to shoot in RAW+Fine JPEG since the post processing is only done on the Jpeg leaving you with a low quality HDR Jpeg or without Raw file. Also on the D60 it takes some time after each shot to do the post-processing. I have been using the D60 for some time and I ended up disabling the feature.

The ISO capabilities and the Video feature of the camera however make it really tempting to me.
If you want my advice though, don't buy the D90 if you're very interested in the video feature it's still not well developed (no AF no h.264 codec etc.) I'd wait for Nikon to create a decent video feature.

If you want more info on the topic i've written an article in my blog about video on DSLRs