The Nikon D90 is Out!
August 27th, 2008
Holy mo!
WHERE IS CANON?
It seems the whole R&D crew of Canon has gone to Nikon!
In almost breathtaking speed, Nikon is announcing new cameras to spruce up it's whole range to push them to the forefront of what is available today.
The object at hand:
After the D700 has essentially many of the features of the D3 needed by low-light shooters and being full frame, the new D90 has essentially many of the features of the relatively new D300 packed up in a light amateur body. The price will be nice. For starters, the 12MP CMOS sensor (the D80 has a noisy-ish CCD sensor) is the same, which pretty much defines the ISO levels, going up same as the D300 up to 3200 plus boost. Pretty darn good.
Comparing to the D300, the D90 has a slower maximum frame rate, only 11 AF points instead of 51 (a deal breaker for me). On the other hand, it has HD-Video Capture (albiet WITHOUT autofocus, so that's pretty much a dud sold as a feature, haha). Who the heck would roll a video without autofocus???
I love the dedicated Liveview button and wish the D300 and D700 would have it. The shutter is quieter than the D300, nice! The camera is faster on all points than the D80: Maximum frame rate, scrolling when using the display, etc. And also better on all points, effectively rendering the D80 obsolete.
It has a dust shaker which the D80 didn't have (marketing ploy, these shakers are not good for much. All they do is shake the dust around the insides of the camera, so it will eventually find itself back onto the sensor. You need to REMOVE dust, not shake it around!)
So all in all, a welcome upgrade to the D80. It's just of matter of time till this technology trickles down to the budget DSLR line of Nikon (D60), but at this rate, Nikon is running out of model numbers.... The D70 is already taken.
Here's a glowing report with some of the shortcomings of the D90 (NY-Times article)
