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Nikon D90 Review and tips

October 5, 2010 By 4 Comments

Nikon_ D90

Updated: Oct. 5, 2010 — The Nikon D90 is still a great cam­era but with time and new tech­nol­ogy it will soon be replaced by Nikon’s new D7000 which has not yet been released. I would rec­om­mend the D5000 or D3100 or even the D3000 at the low end, as entry level cam­eras for those new to DSLR’s and D7000 or D300s for the Advanced Pho­tog­ra­pher.  Look for deep dis­counts for the Nikon D90 in the near future.

Post Update: Oct. 12, 2010 — New arti­cle — Com­pare the Nikon D300s, D3100 and D7000 the replace­ment for D90.

 

Nikon D90 Review

Nikon D90 is the new replace­ment for the D80. Some of the high-end Nikons are sta­ples of qual­ity dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. One model in par­tic­u­lar, though a lit­tle pricey for casual picture-takers, is a favorite among advanced ama­teurs and indus­try insid­ers: the Nikon D90.

The Nikon D90 is a 12.3 mega pixel dig­i­tal cam­era with con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing up to 4.5 frames per sec­ond. Pic­tures are taken in JPEG or 12-bit NEF (RAW) for­mat. The cam­era has a low noise ISO sen­si­tiv­ity range from 200 to 3200. It has 5 scene modes, pro­grammed, man­ual, aper­ture pri­or­ity, shut­ter pri­or­ity and auto­matic expo­sure mode set­tings.  It has man­ual and auto focus modes to ensure the full con­trol of the pho­to­graph regard­less of dis­tance or light­ing. There is a 3 inch LCD mon­i­tor, one but­ton live view, image edit­ing, and an auto­matic image sen­sor cleaner.   The hot new fea­ture on this cam­era is that it shoots 720p HD movies at 24fps in motion JPEG for­mat (first of its kind).

The Lenses

The Nikon D90 uses the full line of Nikon DX lenses along with many other Nikon and after­mar­ket lenses. I rec­om­mend you buy the best lenses you can afford. The lens is one the most impor­tant fac­tors when it comes to image qual­ity. Lenses have a life cycle of 10 years or more. Cam­eras have a shorter life cycle of between 3 to 5 years because of the fast mov­ing tech­nol­ogy. Because the lens life is so much longer than the cam­era, I rec­om­mend you put more empha­sis on the lens qual­ity than the cam­era. One more thing this is a very hi-tech cam­era and you should have the lat­est hi-tech lenses. The DX (APS-C) for­mat sen­sor used on this cam­era, and most other D-SLR cam­eras, is smaller than the 35mm film or full frame FX sen­sor used on the Nikon D700, D3s and D3X. There­fore, qual­ity ED (Extra Low Dis­tor­tion) glass and VR (image sta­bi­liza­tion) is very impor­tant to get the best images from D-SLR cam­eras with DX (APS-C) for­mat sen­sor. There is one great advan­tage of the DX for­mat. You can mul­ti­ply the focal length by 1.5x mak­ing a 200mm lens equiv­a­lent to a 300mm lens in full frame 35mm or FX format.

The lenses I use and rec­om­mend for out­door photography:

Nikon 12-24mm f/4G ED IF Aut­o­fo­cus DX Nikkor Zoom Lens

Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5–5.6G AF-S DX ED VR Nikkor Wide Angle Tele­photo Zoom Lens for Nikon DSLR Cameras

AF-S Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED VR II telephoto

Nikon AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4–5.6G IF-ED Lens

And one on my wish list:

Nikon AF VR Zoom-NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5–5.6D ED Lens

The Nikon D90 uses SDHC SecureDig­i­tal High Capac­ity and SecureDig­i­tal (SD) mem­ory cards not included. I rec­om­mend 2GB to 8GB class 6, high speed cards. The cam­era comes with A/V and USB cables, as well as an EN-EL3e Lithium-ion recharge­able bat­tery, bat­tery charger, strap, eye­piece cap, dust cap, body cap, LCD cover, CD-ROMs with Nikon soft­ware suite and man­ual. All of this hard­ware makes the cam­era sound like seri­ous busi­ness, and it is. This is no child’s toy. The Nikon D90 stands at the point where dig­i­tal cam­eras start to get expen­sive. Its users would pay a higher price still for such crisp, clear pho­tographs and easy-to-use extra fea­tures. This is one cam­era that’s worth the cost.

 

The Bat­tery

The recharge­able bat­tery used in this cam­era is the EN-EL3e Lithium-ion pro­pri­etary bat­tery, which for travel I rec­om­mend you buy 1 or 2 spares. The good news is the bat­tery life is great with as many as 800 shots per charge. The price for the Nikon brand is about $50.00 US. The other option is after mar­ket bat­ter­ies at a price of around $20.00 US at Batteries.com And B&H Photo video. I per­son­ally have used these bat­ters and they work very well. For about $20.00 US they also have com­pact charger with flip out plug and auto­mo­bile cig­a­rette lighter adapter that is per­fect for travel. See right side bar to link to these adver­tis­ers.

I rec­om­mend DVD video train­ing for the Nikon D90 to get you up to speed fast with the oper­a­tion of the cam­era. You can watch the video all the way through and then go back to view the areas where you need addi­tional assis­tance. The train­ing I rec­om­mend is Blue Crane Dig­i­tal Nikon D90 Vol 1 & 2 .

A sturdy cam­era, the Nikon D90 weighs in at approx. 22oz. Its phys­i­cal dimen­sions are 4.1in. x 5.2in. x 3in. (HxWxD), Users like the Nikon D90’s nat­ural feel. It fits right into the photographer’s hands and doesn’t feel clumsy or bulky.

Other Optional Accessories:

MB-D80 multi power bat­tery pack: Holds 2 EN-EL3e or 6 AA Batteries

MC-DC2 remote cord: Shut­ter Release

GP-1 GPS unit: for live geo­t­ag­ing to image files

SB-600 AF speed­light unit: Flash Replaced with SB-700 Speed­light Shoe Mount Flash

Or

Nikon SB-900 AF Speed­light i-TTL Shoe Mount Flash

Nikon EN-EL3e Recharge­able Lithium-Ion Battery

After Mar­ket Accessories:

Hood­man H-EyeN22S Hood­eye for Nikon square 22nn SLR Line

Hood­man H-LPP3 Hood­loupe 3.0 Pro­fes­sional 3 inch screen loupe

EN-EL3e AC/DC Com­pact Dig­i­tal Cam­era Bat­tery Charger

Nikon EN-EL3e Li-Ion Replace­ment Dig­i­tal Cam­era Battery

SDHC Mem­ory Cards

User sen­ti­ments are over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive. This cam­era is touted as the next step to the advance to pro pho­tog­ra­pher. When the seri­ous advance Pho­tog­ra­pher sets out to take great pic­tures the Nikon D90 will be wait­ing for them. Cus­tomers insist that the cam­era is easy to use, even with all the extra fea­tures. You cer­tainly don’t have to be a pro­fes­sional to take professional-quality pho­tographs with the Nikon D90 dig­i­tal camera.

The Nikon D90 sells for about $869US for the body only. It can be found online at B&H Photo Video Dig­i­tal Cam­era and retail­ers or any­where dig­i­tal cam­eras are sold.

Nikon D90 12.3MP Dig­i­tal SLR Cam­era (Body Only)

Other Nikon D-SLRs Cam­eras: D40 ‚  D60 ‚  D70 , D3000 ‚D3100 , D5000 , D7000 D80 ‚  D90 ‚  D300 , D300s ‚  D700 , D3 ‚  D3s ‚  D3X, D4

Filed Under: Nikon D90, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

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Finding Your Camera Lens Sweet Spot

January 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

So you are look­ing for a new cam­era lens or you went out and bought a brand new D-SLR dig­i­tal cam­era with the kit lens. Now you want to pro­duce 11 x 14 or 16 x20 or larger sharp prints.  You will need a good tri­pod and know your cam­era lens sweet spot. The lens sweet spot is the aper­ture or F-stop set­ting which pro­duces sharpest image possible.

The lens sweet spot is deter­mined by which F-stop or aper­ture to get the sharpest image. All lenses have a sweet spot.  What we are going to deter­mine is what aper­ture will pro­duce the sharpest image.  A sim­ple rule of thumb is to take the widest aper­ture and stop it down 2 full f stops or 2 full aper­ture val­ues ( see chart below).  Let’s say you have a lens with a max­i­mum F-stop of F4.  That would make the sweet spot of your lens about F8.  The prob­lem is this may not be the exact sweet spot for your par­tic­u­lar lens. The only way to really know is to test the lens for your­self or you may find it in a lens review arti­cle in one of the many pho­tog­ra­phy mag­a­zines.  The prob­lem is that your lens may not have been tested or at least may not have iden­ti­fied the sweet spot of your lens.

Photoshop tutorials
Full F-stop Chart

Your lens may have other F-stops not listed on this chart above.

The chart above gives the cor­re­spond­ing aper­ture value to F-stop.  As each aper­ture value increases it cuts the light in half.  As each aper­ture val­ues decreases it dou­bles the light.

So let’s test the lens.  The first thing I did was find a test pat­tern chart to test the lens.  I found one at http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/ISO_12233-reschart.pdf You can print it right from the site or down­loaded it.  Once down­loaded you can print the test chart in the best qual­ity your printer will allow you to print.   This is what you will need to run this test: your cam­era and lens; a sturdy tri­pod; a remote cable release; a board to mount the test chart on; the test chart.

Step 1. Attach the chart on the board with tape so that the chart will not move if there is any wind.

Step 2.  Find a bright spot out­side and set the board with the chart in the sun.

Step 3.  Install your cam­era on a tripod.

Step 4.  Select the cam­era to aper­ture priority.

Step 5.  Focus your cam­era on the chart.

Test Chart Loca­tion Below

Next, we’ll start with full open.  Let’s say at f5.6 and shoot your first pic­ture.  Next we’ll shoot a photo at each f-stop, mak­ing note of each photo’s f-stop so that when you import them you will know which F-stop cor­re­sponds to each pho­to­graph.  Be sure to use your remote shut­ter release cable and don’t move the cam­era through the whole process.  Please note  that any cam­era shake or move­ment will cause an inac­cu­rate test.

After you fin­ish, take your mem­ory card and import into your favorite photo edit­ing soft­ware.  (I use Adobe Light­room 2.)  Open the pho­tos in your edi­tor and set the  mag­ni­fi­ca­tion to one to one.  Use a side by side com­pare func­tion if avail­able.  Now, care­fully inspect and com­pare each pho­to­graph to see which one is the sharpest.  Once you have deter­mined which photo is the sharpest you have found your lens F-stop sweet spot.

If you are using a zoom lens you may want to repeat these steps for sev­eral focal lengths.  Let’s say you’re using a 70 to 200 mm lens.  First use 70mm then 130mm then 200mm. This will let you find the best F-stop for the sharpest pic­ture at all F-stops.

The chart below shows the tests results I found with the lenses I have.

Con­clu­sion.

One thing that I found when per­form­ing these tests is the bet­ter the lens qual­ity the harder it is to find the exact sweet spot. These lenses gen­er­ally had between two and three F-stops with the best sharp­ness. With some less expen­sive lens I found it easy to find a sin­gle F-stop sweet spot. But it is pos­si­ble with higher end con­sumer lenses with ED glass (extra low dis­tor­tion glass) you can get very sharp images.

Now you know what your lens sweet spot is.  Even if you have a less expen­sive lens, by using this knowl­edge, you will be able to get very sharp pho­tographs with most lenses.  But, we do live in the real world.  Some­times, because of low light con­di­tions, or the need to adjust the depth of field, we may have to adjust our F-stop to our needs.  So, if the sit­u­a­tion is right to use the sweet spot of your lens,  you will find you will get the sharpest pic­tures pos­si­ble with your lens.

The Tele­con­verter

I was not happy with the test results on the Nikon TC-20E II 2X Tele­con­verter.   I have read other reviews of the Nikon brand Tele­con­verter that come to same con­clu­sion. They also revealed that the Nikon TC-17E II 1.7x and Nikon TC-14E II 1.4x both had supe­rior per­for­mance over the TC-20E II 2X Teleconverter.

If you are in the mar­ket for a new lens or cam­era, buy the best lens you can afford.  In my opin­ion, the lens is more impor­tant than the cam­era.  Con­sider this the lens has a life cycle of about 10 or more years and because the cam­era tech­nol­ogy changes so fast, the camera’s life cycle is only 2 to 5 years.

So do your home­work before you buy any cam­era, lens or teleconverter.

Please share your ques­tions or com­ments below.

Happy sharp shooting.

Doug Nie­der­miller



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Filed Under: Lens Sweet Spot, Photo Tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Lens Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO

December 11, 2009 By 4 Comments

Lens aper­ture, shut­ter speed and ISO are the three pri­mary adjust­ments avail­able to achieve a prop­erly exposed pho­to­graph. These set­tings can also affect the image qual­ity and artis­tic effects of your photography.

Lens Aper­ture

The aper­ture is the size of the open­ing in the cam­era lens at the moment a photo is taken.  Aper­ture is mea­sured in frac­tions, so the larger the num­ber, the smaller the aper­ture open­ing.  Shut­ter speed and aper­ture are the two pri­mary con­trols for lim­it­ing the amount of light that hits the cam­era sen­sor.  Aper­ture also con­trols the depth of field.  A small aper­ture will pro­duce a pho­to­graph with almost all objects in focus.  A large aper­ture will pro­duce a pho­to­graph with a small amount  of the objects in focus.  This will give you con­trol over what you want in focus. That is why I pri­mar­ily use the aper­ture pri­or­ity cam­era set­ting in my photography.

Typ­i­cal aper­tures include:   f1   f1.4    f2     f2.8     f4     f5.6    f8     f11     f16     f22     f23 f45

Cam­era Shut­ter Speed

Shut­ter speed is the amount of time the shut­ter remains open when a photo is taken.  Shut­ter speed and aper­ture together deter­mine just how much light hits the film or cam­era sen­sor.  The shut­ter speed is also a frac­tion, just like the aper­ture.  A shut­ter speed of 500 is actu­ally 1/500, or “one five hun­dredth of a sec­ond. To hand hold a cam­era, the rule of thumb is a 50mm lens can be hand-held at 1/60 of a sec­ond.  A 200mm lens at 1/200 of a sec­ond and so on.  To achieve this you can adjust the aper­tures or the ISO settings.

Typ­i­cal shut­ter speeds:  30s    20s    10s   4s   2s   1s   1/2s    1/4s     1/8s   1/15s    1/30s   1/60s   1/125s     1/250s     1/500s    1/1000s    1/2000s    1/4000s

Cam­era Sen­sor ISO

The sen­si­tiv­ity of film or cam­era sen­sor is mea­sured by ISO, and the larger the num­ber, the more sen­si­tive the cam­era sen­sor.  ISO 100 needs a lot of light, like out­doors on a sunny day.  ISO 1600 doesn’t need much light.  How­ever, higher ISO means more grain in the film and more noise in dig­i­tal.  Dig­i­tal images bor­row the ISO scale to mea­sure the sen­si­tiv­ity of film.  Just like the grain that’s added to film at higher ISO set­tings, more “noise” is added to dig­i­tal images at higher ISO.  In gen­eral, as ISO goes up, qual­ity goes down.  Some of the new mid to high-end D-SLR have improved the noise lev­els at the higher ISO set­tings up to ISO 1600.  Some of the new cam­eras have ISO set­tings between 100 and 102400.

Typ­i­cal ISO set­tings:   50   100   200 400   800   1600   and high ISO 3200 6400

Con­clu­sion

My basic cam­era set­tings I use related to this arti­cle  are: ISO 100 for best image qual­ity  and set cam­era to aper­ture pri­or­ity.  Also, use a tri­pod when ever pos­si­ble.  All three set­tings work in con­cert and affect proper expo­sure.  All have their advan­tages an dis­ad­van­tages, so exper­i­ment with all of  these set­tings and you will become a bet­ter photographer.

Ref­er­ence

Hear is a nice Expo­sure Chart

 

Doug Nie­der­miller Photography

 

 


Adobe Lightroom 2

 

 

Filed Under: Aperture Shutter ISO, Photo Tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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