Nikon D90 Digital Camera Review

Nikon D90

Digital Camera Review

Oct 14, 2008 - By Steve Morgenstern
4.4 News coverage of the Nikon D90 introduction focused on the fact that this is the first SLR to shoot video, a feature long available on even low-cost point-and-shoots. After working with the camera for several weeks, though, we're less excited about the video than the D90's strong across-the-board performance when shooting stills. This 12.3-megapixel camera is easy to handle, scored very well in nearly all of our lab tests, and offers effective training-wheel features for newbies without losing any of the hands-on fine-tuning seasoned Nikon shooters expect. The detailed review follows.
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Nikon D90 Review

Speed/Timing
All speed tests were performed with a fast SanDisk Extreme III 8-gigabyte SDHC card, to avoid memory bottlenecks.
Startup to First Shot (9.2)
We measure the time it takes to turn on the camera and snap your first shot. The D90 was very speedy on this test, consistently snagging that first photo in well under half a second.

Shot-to-Shot (4.44)
Nikon says the high-speed continuous mode will snag 4.5 frames per second, a high rate that should appeal to anyone who shoots sports and other fast-action subjects. Our testing results came in at 4.44. If only all manufacturers’ claims were this accurate.

Shutter-Shot (10.00)
The time elapsed between pressing down on the shutter and capturing an image was too brief to be measured accurately, giving the D90 our highest score in this category.

Processing (13.00)
In some of our Nikon camera testing, we've found the lag between taking the shot and seeing the results on the LCD screen was longer than we’d like – even the $3000 D70 takes about 1.6 seconds for this operation. The D90 blazed through this test, though, consistently completing its processing chores in under 0.7 seconds.

 

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