Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

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Archive 2008 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

molson
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p.1 #1 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Thom Hogan has posted some info on the soon-to-be-released Nikon D90 and some other tidbits...

http://www.bythom.com/

Aug 06, 2008 at 02:24 AM

Taylor Barrett
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p.1 #2 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Wow. He seems confident. If what he says is true, I'll probably trade my D300 in for one. I love the D300 but if my experience with the D200 vs D80 stays true here, the D90 will be more than enough for my meager abilities.

Edited on Aug 06, 2008 at 02:32 AM

Aug 06, 2008 at 02:26 AM

Erik Moore
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p.1 #3 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Wow. LiveView video recording. Well, we should have seen this coming. The 'shortcoming' that makes joe consumer put down the SLR and head over to the P&S counter (no video) is now gone. My guess- this feature alone is going to expand SLR sales by a huge margin.

Seasoned photographers are chuckling, uncle Bob is drooling.

Aug 06, 2008 at 03:05 AM

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p.1 #4 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Erik Moore wrote:
Seasoned photographers are chuckling, uncle Bob is drooling.

and at the end of the day, we were all once new to photography :-)

Aug 06, 2008 at 03:21 AM

Erik Moore
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p.1 #5 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

BenV wrote:
Erik Moore wrote:
Seasoned photographers are chuckling, uncle Bob is drooling.

and at the end of the day, we were all once new to photography :-)

Well. I'd love to say that I've been doing it since before the current DSLR boom, but it's not true. I still consider myself a beginner in most aspects.

Aug 06, 2008 at 03:25 AM

zoetmb
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p.1 #6 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Well..it depends upon the resolution of the video recording and how long you can record. If it's low resolution and short, it's nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

Aug 06, 2008 at 03:52 AM

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p.1 #7 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Well, using good codecs the amount of video you can put onto largish SDHC cards is measured in hours. There's really no reason not to allow as long clips as the card can hold. Quality will be the real question. Obviously you've got far more pixels than you can ever use, but the issue is your processing bandwidth and write speeds. Still, in both categories the D90 should have more hardware capacity than compacts, so I should think we'd be looking at VGA (or possibly 16:9 @ 480 lines, whatever that comes to) minimum. HD recording capability would make it an extremely interesting device to say the least, but I'm not sure the data pipeline is going to be up to that.

Personally, I find the prospects of the D300's sensor in a relatively inexpensive package far more intriguing, but it certainly can't hurt Nikon's marketing to have a distinguishing feature like video in this market segment where no one else is going to match it till the next product cycle.

Aug 06, 2008 at 04:13 AM

molson
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p.1 #8 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

... it certainly can't hurt Nikon's marketing to have a distinguishing feature like video in this market segment where no one else is going to match it till the next product cycle.

Uh-oh... looks like Canon will have to postpone the 5D Mark II again...

Edited on Aug 06, 2008 at 04:30 AM

Aug 06, 2008 at 04:30 AM

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p.1 #9 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

I think it'd be very cool to change the lens for what you are recording... I don't know much about video so not sure how easily available this is already, but I think it'd be awesome to say record your kid playing sports with a 70-200mm lens. I'm sure camcorders have a huge zoom but if you use a 300mm+ lens you could get some really zoomed recordings of animals and anything

Aug 06, 2008 at 08:02 AM

binary visions
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p.1 #10 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

I think the video option would be really cool. I would only utilize it very rarely but every once in a while there's something that I'd just love to catch in motion... when I went to Costa Rica, we hit upon one of the rainforest birds doing a little dance in the tree above us that was so ridiculous looking that I couldn't possibly capture its intricacies in a still image.

It would be neat to have video for the occasional time like that. Most of the time I don't care to have it and short clips would be enough for me.

Doesn't matter, though, I'm not giving up my D300 even if the D90 shoots 1080p video @ 60fps

Aug 06, 2008 at 10:37 AM

panos.v
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p.1 #11 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Video? It will be interesting to see how the following problems will be solved:
1) battery drain, given that the sensor and LCD will have to be on all the time
2) how much dust the sensor will attract after staying exposed for half an hour
3) what kind of sensor they will be using. The video is still lots of still frames, I doubt the shutter will be opening/closing to do the capturing otherwise a 100,000 frame shutter will last about an hour and a bit. If they leave the shutter open and use an electronic shutter then that kind of puts us back to D70 terittory. The D70 might be a great camera but the only thing that bugs me is that the electronic shutter blooms badly when shooting into the sun, just like small P&S cameras that record video.

Edited on Aug 06, 2008 at 10:54 AM

Aug 06, 2008 at 10:53 AM

molson
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p.1 #12 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

panos.v wrote:
Video? It will be interesting to see how the following problems will be solved:
1) battery drain, given that the sensor and LCD will have to be on all the time
2) how much dust the sensor will attract after staying exposed for half an hour
3) what kind of sensor they will be using. The video is still lots of still frames, I doubt the shutter will be opening/closing to do the capturing otherwise a 100,000 frame shutter will last about an hour and a bit. If they leave the shutter open and use an electronic shutter then that kind of puts us back to D70 terittory. The D70 might be a great camera but the only thing that bugs me is that the electronic shutter blooms badly when shooting into the sun, just like small P&S cameras that record video.

Battery drain was the first concern I had, too.

The idea of an electronic shutter is certainly of interest for those who liked the unlimited flash sync speeds of the D1X and EOS 1D...

Aug 06, 2008 at 12:25 PM

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p.1 #13 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Where does this wives tale about the charged sensor come from? May I remind that the sensor is behind a curtain, a shutter curtain that is light tight. If light does not pass through - dust never will. Secondarily the sensor is behind a glass filter.

Certain charges attract and certain repel - based on many factors. The dust would already have to be in the chamber and then would more likely stick based simply on turbulence. But this urban legend is funny and with no basis.

Video, I think, stands a chance to, rather quickly, change photography as we practice it now. Like glass plates, film and now digital - something better is coming. Usually the old guard laughs for a while. Remember how they belittled digital - for a few years?

Aug 06, 2008 at 12:54 PM

panos.v
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p.1 #14 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Pavel wrote:
Where does this wives tale about the charged sensor come from? May I remind that the sensor is behind a curtain, a shutter curtain that is light tight. If light does not pass through - dust never will. Secondarily the sensor is behind a glass filter.

Nobody said anything about a "charged" sensor. But if the shutter is closed, what does the video recording?

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:01 PM

Todd Adamson
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p.1 #15 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Wow, video. I can finally leave my cell phone at home now.

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:06 PM

binary visions
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p.1 #16 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

panos.v wrote:
The D70 might be a great camera but the only thing that bugs me is that the electronic shutter blooms badly when shooting into the sun

Is there something that prevents the shutter from operating normally in all standard shooting modes, but opening the shutter and using an electronic shutter during video and high speed sync of the flash?

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:10 PM

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p.1 #17 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Erik Moore wrote:
The 'shortcoming' that makes joe consumer put down the SLR and head over to the P&S counter (no video) is now gone.

Wrong! There`s always going to be plenty of folk who have no desire / need to take along a bulky (costly) dslr just to be able to take video clips.
Add to this the fact that so many dslr users on these forums will frown upon video in a dslr mainly because they feel it`s amateurish and they wouldn`t want to be embarrased having a camera with this feature. Heh,heh,heh.
I can`t wait to read the many threads coming from those who own a D80 and feel the D90 is a step down with this consumer class feature.

P&S cameras will always be popular just for pocketability alone.
These folks aren`t going to be interested one bit in a dslr .
I can`t see this feature causing an increase in dslr sales.

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:12 PM

panos.v
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p.1 #18 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

No idea, that's why I said it would be interesting to see what kind of sensor they will be using to combine still and video recording.

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:12 PM

molson
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p.1 #19 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

uccmmcpo wrote:
Add to this the fact that so many dslr users on these forums will frown upon video in a dslr mainly because they feel it`s amateurish and they wouldn`t want to be embarrased having a camera with this feature. Heh,heh,heh.

Chances are, Nikon is targeting the other 99.9999% of the population...

Edited on Aug 06, 2008 at 01:19 PM

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:19 PM

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p.1 #20 · Nikon D90... Thom's been busy!

Well, as an avid DSLR / SLR user, I just picked up my latest camera this past weekend - and I switched to Canon! I bought a Powershot SD890 P&S. I was attending a ZZ Top concert and the DSLR simply wouldn't work in that instance (can't quite shove it a pocket and get by, especially since they were doing pat-down searches!)

There are some things that a DSLR simply doesn't do well. Okay, so I was too far away and the pictures sucked, but the point is that I went home with some shots of the concert rather than nothing. Add to that the fact that I could just dump it in my shirt pocket rather than carry around a 6+ pound rig that I had to worry about someone trying to take from me, and the little P&S does have its place. (I still wish I had been able to bring in my D700 and 70-200 + 1.7X TC!)

I don't see huge ranks of people jumping on the DSLR bandwagon, but I do think that some will find the added features useful. I don't use live view much myself - it works better on a P&S than a DSLR in my opinion - but my last boss felt that the lack of that on the D40 was a reason not to get that camera - ever. He, and many others I suspect, do not want to change the way they do business. I think something in a DSLR that emulates a P&S in the way it works could be a nice step up from a P&S, as well as open people's eyes to what can be accomplished.

Live view? Sure. Video? Absolutely. Give them what they are used to and want in the new camera and you may brimg more people over. Keep in mind that the object is for them to buy more lenses and want better DSLRs in their hands, and this might be a way to do it. I care about the IQ, so if I want a cheaper camera, these features would not bother me at all if I got that with decent IQ. I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way for it, but I'd take it just the same.

David

Aug 06, 2008 at 01:57 PM

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