Nikon D90 - Good Things Come in Small Packages

After falling in love with Nikon's D3, my interest was greatly peaked by claims of high ISO performance of the last few cameras coming off the Nikon line. In particular, the D90, a 12MP replacement to the very capable D80. Not only were folks claiming it's ISO performance was worth noticing, but this little guy could capture HD video (720p) as well!

So the backup D200 body went on the market, and finally last week, with the sale of my beloved D200 behind me, I placed an order for a D90. In true B&H style (I love those guys), it showed up a mere 2-days later. Below you'll find a picture I took of the little guy in the studio.

So, it's got a gorgeous 3-inch LCD on the back, and a host of improvements to the user interface (cheers to the software engineers that worked on the menu system) - but what about the high ISO? I was hoping you'd ask so I'd get to be like every other obsessive compulsive photo equipment fan out there - here's some test shots from my basement.

Keep in mind these aren't full size images, so inherently the noise is going to be a little less noticeable, but these should give you an idea of the capabilities of the camera.

Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR Lens, f/4 @ 1/3s, ISO 400

Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR Lens, f/4 @ 1/6s, ISO 800

Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR Lens, f/4 @ 1/13s, ISO 1600

Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR Lens, f/4.2 @ 1/25s, ISO 3200

Nikon D90, 18-105mm VR Lens, f/4.2 @ 1/50s, ISO HI1 (6400)

Needless to say, very nice - especially coming from an extremely affordable consumer model DSLR (High-end professional models didn't have this kind of performance just a couple years ago). It has a completely usable ISO 1600, and 3200 is there if you needed it. Keep in mind, the basement is lit by two 60-watt overhead lights, one of which is on the other side of the room. This is a great little camera!

My only complaint... even with the recently updated Camera Raw 4.6 - the camera's RAW files aren't readable in Lightroom 2 without first converting them to DNG. Oh well. I'll survive. ;-) We'll probably see an update next Tuesday when Adobe CS4 is announced. Fingers crossed.

No demo video yet... we'll play with that feature soon.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week! All the best.

Update: Here's a link to download the full res version of the ISO 6400 shot... click here to download.

Comments

[Rob Jones]

Keep in mind we're talking about a DX-format sensor in a $999 camera, it's a little noisy, but I definitely think it's usable.

[Jalouse]

The ISO 1600 results look pretty noisy.

[Emilio]

Fantastic post! I'd love to see my little D40x get an upgrade to the D90. Based on your photos and scene description, it would really help me capture some better pictures of family indoors. It's ISO performance that you showed off is simply amazing (by the way, I love how I can click on all of your pictures and really see the noise detail, or lack thereof). Just for fun, I'd love to see a companion blog entry showing off the D90's performance w/ 4 more photos for comparison ... I'd love to see your ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 shots taken with the table lamp on, and then I'd love to see your original scene @ ISO 3200 taken with a pro lens... say, your 18-70mm lens, f/2.8 @ 1/25s, and again @ 1/50s. Thanks for the great posts this week!