With all of the focus on the election, there was one very welcome bit of non-election news yesterday. Apple released Digital Camera Raw Compatibility 2.3, which finally adds RAW support for the Nikon D90 to Aperture, iPhoto, and other applications.
D90
Music video created with Nikon D90
Bee Ng has created a music video shot entirely with a Nikon D90. The quality really looks great.
As this demonstrates, the time & size limit for D90 video isn’t really a problem if you’re going to be doing any editing. You can shoot separate scenes, which will fit easily in the time limit, and join them.
The D90 is selling fast
I like to check Flickr’s camera finder page every few days to see how popular the D90 is. As I write this, the D90 is ranked 15 of 102 Nikon models. Less than a week ago, it wasn’t even listed. Yesterday it was #19, a jump of 4 places in one day.
Here’s a shot I took today with my 50mm lens at f1.8. I love being able to use auto focus with that lens.
The D90's Eye-Fi Surprise
I haven’t been using my Eye-Fi card because I prefer using a higher capacity 8G card with the D40x & D90’s large file sizes. I also prefer to choose which pictures to upload and do any necessary touchups rather than just upload everything immediately.
When I heard about the D90’s Eye-Fi support I decided to give it a try. The D90 recognizes an Eye-Fi card and adds a new item to the setup menu which lets you choose whether you want it to upload automatically. The D90 also adjusts its power settings to avoid shutting off while pictures are uploading.
When I do upload from the Eye-Fi card, rather than uploading to Flickr, where I prefer to be a bit more selective, I always used Picassa as sort of a dumping ground. I also have it upload to a folder on my MacBook Pro, where I can import it into Aperture, do any necessary touchup, and upload the best to Flickr.
D90 Real World Performance
Today I went to Lauderdale-by-the-sea, the same place we had the photowalk, with my D90 to compare it with the D40x’s performance in a similar situation. I find that the move from the D40x to the D90 is as big a jump as switching from a point & shoot camera to the D40x.
In general, the D90 gives much sharper detail and better color than the D40x. Although it’s noticeably bigger & heavier than the D40x, I didn’t find it at all uncomfortable to use.
The D90’s battery life is excellent. When I started, my battery was one bar below fully charged. After taking over 600 shots and 4 movies, it was only down two more bars.
You can see the difference in quality very dramatically in this side-by-side comparison.
The ocean was fairly rough from the storms and there were a few skim boarders, but they stayed pretty close to shore, so I didn’t catch any spectacular jumps or wipeouts like I did at the photowalk. Besides doing continuous shooting, I also recorded a few D-movies.
You can see the full set of photos I shot today here as well as the D-Movies.
HDR photos with a D90
The D90’s exposure bracketing feature is great for HDR imaging. When you turn on bracketing, 2 or 3 consecutive shots will automatically use different exposures. If you use continuous mode, simply press and hold the shutter release to take the 2 or 3 bracketed shots. The resulting shots are exactly what you need to merge into an HDR image. I used the Hydra HDR plugin with Aperture 2.1 for this one.
D90 in low light
After using the D90 for a few days, I’m very impressed with it. Live view is a lot better than I expected and I really like having dedicated buttons for settings like white balance, quality, and ISO so I don’t have to keep going to the menu as I did on the D40x.
This evening I tried using it in low light and I found that it performs beautifully at high ISO settings. All of these pictures were taken when it was almost completely dark and without a tripod. I shot in JPEG and didn’t do any noise reduction or other processing.
Taken at ISO 1600, shows very little noise.
Taken at ISO 2000, shows some noticeable noise but still looks good.
Taken at ISO 4000, shows quite a bit of noise but doesn’t look too bad. Passable at smaller sizes.
