Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

In this corner, we have a $999 USD Nikon D90, and in the other corner we have a $5200 USD Panasonic HVX200. This head to head video test has some surprising results...check it out! You'll need to jump over to Vimeo to watch it in HD though, which is of course the entire point. ;-)

D90 and HVX side-by-side test from Chronicle Project on Vimeo

"The Nikon D90 ($999, body only) is the long-awaited replacement to the popular D80 digital SLR. The D90 sits between the D60 and D300 in Nikon's D-SLR lineup, though many of its features come from its more expensive sibling. While it may look a lot like its predecessor, the D90 is essentially an all-new camera on the inside. The D90's most talked-about feature isn't its sensor, continuous shooting performance, or anything like that. Rather, it's the fact that it's the first D-SLR with a movie mode -- and in HD, no less."

The Nikon D90 is perhaps one of the best bang for your buck cameras under $1000 USD - it packs a lot of great features into a reasonably-sized frame, and offers 720p video capture as well. This review is very detailed and well worth the read if you're interested in this camera.

As was suspected, the Nikon D90 went public this week - this morning actually. All the specs and details are up on Nikon USA's site, but let me give you the breakdown on what's interesting. First, I was wrong about it being a CCD sensor: it has the same size DX-format sensor (15.8 x 23.6mm) as the Nikon D300, with the same number of effective pixels. So that right there is a bit shocking: you can get the same sensor in a camera that's basically half as much. Same ISO as well: 3200, or 6400 ISO in "high" mode. So from the sensor point of view, the D90 matches the D300, and it should produce fantastic photos, even in low light. I've been blown away by how great my D300 is in low light. The D90 also has the same amazing three-inch LCD screen as the D300, which I've found to be incredibly useful for seeing which photos really turned out. Read more...

Those of you who have been waiting for this camera, your time is almost over - Nikon is expected to officially announce it tomorrow. The specs? A 12.3 megapixel sensor (I presume CCD, there's no mention of CMOS) capable of ISO 200 to 3200, with a Low (ISO 100) and Hi (ISO 6400) setting. A three inch, 900,000 pixel screen (similar to the D300 I believe), 11 AF points, Live View, face detection, Matrix metering, and...video capture! Yes, Nikon is finally going there with a DSLR. The camera is going to have video capture, and has a built-in speaker for playback, but there's no mention of the resolution or format of the video capture. I really hope Nikon doesn't use their lame 640 x 480 video capture here; I hope to see 720p video, hopefully in h.264 format. Now that would be impressive! If the pricing makes sense, this looks like it could be a real winner for Nikon (and Nikon shooters).