My earlier DSLR was the great Nikon D40, of which I have also posted a review on this site. I call it great because no DSLR could beat it at the given price point.
But it’s features were only basic and I wanted something with direct control over features, lens compatibility with non motorised lenses, still more ISOs for low light situations and of course it had to be a Nikon as I had purchased a Nikkor 55-200mm VR lens. So I sold my trusted old D40 with kit lens ie, 18-55mm, to a photographer friend after some 10 months use, shooting over 11, 000 images and zeroed in on D90 as anything over it was not in my budget and anything lower was not much more than the D40 in my view.
I have shot more than 3300 shots in last three months with my D90 and that is without a wide anle or normal lens. What I love about this camera is the speed, as I can capture high speed moments without a need of a flash or a very fast lens because of it’s usable ISO range which is upto 6400.
This camera has an APS-C sized sensor which is smaller than the 35mm film. Nikon calls it their DX format. If you use film SLR or FX format lenses with it, they will give you around 1.5 times magnified view. This may be useful for wildlife photographers.
The camera exceeds in quality because of some unique features like Nikon’s 420 segment RGB colour matrix metering to give you correct exposure in almost every situation, 11 point autofocus module, automatic correction of lateral chromatic colour fringes, live view, HD video recording, in camera editing like barrel distortion correction and most importantly Picture Controls.
The Picture Control feature is very important as it allows you to change between various colour settings as required by the situation and you can save your own too by manipulating the presets.
The camera can shoot images upto 12.3 megapixels in JPEG, Raw or both the formats at speeds of around 4.5 frames per second. This is a useful feature for shooting sports or moving things. One may also find useful the 3D tracking feature of AF module.
The camera sports a built in autofocus motor for lenses lacking it and is perfectly compatible with Nikon’s AF, AF-I, AF-D and AF-S lenses.
The ergonomics are perfect and camera sits comfortably in your hand with all the buttons falling naturally to your fingertips. The Lv or live view function can also be accessed by a simple push of a dedicated button for shooting in awkward angles. But mind you that the autofocus suffers badly in this mode.
You can also record 24fps HD videos in Lv mode by simply pressing the Ok button. This was the first DSLR camera that sported video recording in motion jpeg format. But we have to manually focus on everything as AF function becomes inactive. This is a major grouse in otherwise a fantastic camera.
Though I have faced only one problem as yet which is presence of a single cluster of dead pixels. This is more evident while shooting at high ISOs.
I will update this page as I gain more experience and more lenses.