The Nikon D90 is eminently suitable for novice photographers, without patronising by scrimping on features. You’ll get an anti-dust system to keep your 12.3-megapixel CMOS sensor squeaky clean, and a new the AF-S DX Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR (Vibration Reduction) kit lens to stop you shaking it like a Polaroid picture.
The perfect size for novices looking to step up from compact cameras to DSLRs, the Nikon D90 is light, comfy to use and has all the controls and buttons in the right place. While the smaller Nikon D60 was a bit cramped, this feels organised, quick and intuitive to use. The three-inch LCD, meanwhile, is clean and sharp.
Pictures are vibrant, bursting with colour. And the D90 is especially good for action shots, with virtually no shutter delay at all, and can impressively continuously shoot for up to 4.5 frames per second. In all it comes close to rivalling a pro SLR!
Other features Nikon has ploughed into the D90 include Active D-Lighting, which helps the ISO setting of 200-3,200 improve dark shadows and bright headlights, and intelligent autofocus which helps you select the part of your picture you should focus on. While this works well, we still found manual focus was the smarter option. Still, it’s nice to have the choice.
You even get LiveView and D-Movie mode which captures 24fps, 720p HD clips. It’s a useful video-capturing facility, with decent picture quality, but you do have to manually focus on action.
There’s no doubting that with so many features, the D90 is good value for money, The fact that it produces stunning, accurately exposed, superbly detailed images may also stand in its favour…
