d90 – Cons?

[bucky_bacon]

Yay I’m finally getting to buy new lenses. Just ordered the 50mm 1.8! But before I go any further I really feel as though I need a new body. Me and the ol’ d60 had some good times, but anything hi-iso (really anything above 400) is crummy and noisy, autofocus is slow and annoying, never mind the issues with manual focus and metering on non af-s lenses… Huh, what I’ve learned in a year.

Anyhow… I think that I wanna buy a d90. So who has one, and are there any reasons why I shouldn’t get one? What drives you nuts about yours? Brutal honesty please. It’s $850 that I’m likely to part with but I just need to know that I’m doing the right thing!

Thanks.

[sleeping]

I have one. I can only compare it with the D70, though, I never used a D60

– I didn’t see a huge improvement in AF performance vs my D70, but it does have a bunch more AF points.
– The finder is significantly better
– The LCD is so much better it’s not even funny.
– The metering is different than the D70. I don’t know that it’s worse, but it definitely behaves differently, and I haven’t internalized it properly yet
– Battery life seems quite a bit worse than the d70
– The High ISO performance is another huge improvement 3200 is quite usable: http://www.flickr.com/photos/awrose/3873446784/sizes/o/
– I didn’t think live view would be very useful, but for MF macro work on a tripod it is. AF with Live view is basically useless.

[olavf]

It’s not a Canon.
/sorry, I couldn’t resist 😛

[orionid]

When I sober up, I’ll compare it to a d50.

[bucky_bacon]

Thanks sleeping. Very helpful.

Nice try olavf… nice try.

[orionid]

At first, I saw what seemed to be a slight decline from my d50. Images seemed washed out and soft. Then I realized that it was my telephoto that was causing it. When I use my 24mm or my early birthday present to myself 60mm macro, it’s crisp as the fresh snow. Here’s some quick notes in a list-type fashion of d90 vs. d50.

AF – about the same seek time, more points, easy to control focus points when you get the hang of it (or just leave it in weighted auto)
Noise – somewhat noisy at 1600, but not nearly as so as the d50 was. ISO 2000 is about the same noise as the d50 was at 1600. Haven’t pushed the 3200 boundary yet.
Weight – medium frame body with bells and whistles. As expected.
Intuitive use – took me a while to get used to the layout. Everything was in a different spot and all the menus are different. Now that I’m used to it, navigation’s a breeze and most things can be done with external button shortcuts.
Continuous shooting – two modes, vs. 1. High speed as fast as your hardware/buffer can handle. Low speed at set intervals. In raw the buffer gets about six shots at 3 FPS then slows to the card write speed. It can only count to 100. Any more than that, you’ll need the external trigger. I use the yongnuo off of fleabay, it’s the same as the nikon with a different name brand (buttons, menus, etc), and about $100 cheaper.
Live view: non-existant on d50. neat gimmick, somewhat useful for ground level or overhead shooting. no AF in live view.
Video mode: non-existant on d50. neat gimmick, slowly coming up with ideas for using photographic lenses for video. (if you know any, ummm…. models….. that would be up for posing, I mean assisting with stereographic/3d educational films, let me know). No AF in video mode. drives price up.
Light metering: Aperture priority mode defaults to very slightly over-exposed, where the d50 seemed spot-on.

My list of gripes to date:
Had to buy it when I found out d50’s aren’t waterproof.
Resolution is quite capable of letting you know when you’re using shiatty lenses.
It’s not a D3x.
okay, seriously:
In bright daylight, the viewscreen looks a little soft and makes you think a good photo is washed out, thus taking more photos. See next gripe.
RAW files are flippin huge.
My 60mm has a focal range of 0.75″ to infinity. Sometimes with this lens it hunts and winds up resting against the hard stop at the wrong end of the range.
Doesn’t have a mirror-lockup mode for shooting when vibrations are absolutely undesired (ie telescope mounting).

As a whole, I’m definately a huge fan of this body, and I’m glad I got it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orionid/3894547022/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orionid/3865272710/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orionid/3480338878/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orionid/3446710036/

[sleeping]

no AF in live view.

Well, technnically, it does, it’s just god-awful.

Doesn’t have a mirror-lockup mode for shooting when vibrations are absolutely undesired (ie telescope mounting).

Live view does this quite effectively, however.

[orionid]

no AF in live view.

Well, technnically, it does, it’s just god-awful.

True. My bad.

Doesn’t have a mirror-lockup mode for shooting when vibrations are absolutely undesired (ie telescope mounting).

Live view does this quite effectively, however.

Huhm. I’ll have to play around with that more. It always seems to me that when I go to shoot from live view, it drops the mirror, turns off the screen, flips the mirror, shoots, drops the mirror, turns on the screen, then reraises the mirror. Thus, adding even more vibration to the mix. I would definately agree to that in video mode, though.

[sleeping]

Huhm. I’ll have to play around with that more. It always seems to me that when I go to shoot from live view, it drops the mirror, turns off the screen, flips the mirror, shoots, drops the mirror, turns on the screen, then reraises the mirror. Thus, adding even more vibration to the mix. I would definately agree to that in video mode, though.

No, it looks like you’re right. Damn, I thought that worked.

[sleeping]

But there is something: Custom menu D10: “Exposure Delay” This delays the shutter release for about a second after raising the mirror.

[chupathingie]

On mirror slap: Use the “hat trick”… hold a piece of black cardboard over the scope’s line of sight for 5 secs after tripping the shutter. Another trick is to hang a long cloth sack with sand in it around the tube and re-balance. Adding mass deadens the vibrations considerably. The sand trick also helps with less-than-robust tripods.

[bucky_bacon]

AF – about the same seek time, more points, easy to control focus points when you get the hang of it (or just leave it in weighted auto)
Noise – somewhat noisy at 1600, but not nearly as so as the d50 was. ISO 2000 is about the same noise as the d50 was at 1600. Haven’t pushed the 3200 boundary yet.

Yeah it has to be better than the d60’s 3 points. Very excited for less noise also.

Weight – medium frame body with bells and whistles. As expected.
Intuitive use – took me a while to get used to the layout. Everything was in a different spot and all the menus are different. Now that I’m used to it, navigation’s a breeze and most things can be done with external button shortcuts.

From what I’ve read the layout and menus were changed to be more similar to the d60, so that’s a bonus. Should handle the same, vertical grip is a nice addition.

Continuous shooting – two modes, vs. 1. High speed as fast as your hardware/buffer can handle. Low speed at set intervals. In raw the buffer gets about six shots at 3 FPS then slows to the card write speed. It can only count to 100. Any more than that, you’ll need the external trigger. I use the yongnuo off of fleabay, it’s the same as the nikon with a different name brand (buttons, menus, etc), and about $100 cheaper.
Live view: non-existant on d50. neat gimmick, somewhat useful for ground level or overhead shooting. no AF in live view.
Video mode: non-existant on d50. neat gimmick, slowly coming up with ideas for using photographic lenses for video. (if you know any, ummm…. models….. that would be up for posing, I mean assisting with stereographic/3d educational films, let me know). No AF in video mode. drives price up.

I like the idea of set-interval continuous shooting, as opposed to “hold down the trigger and hope it shoots as fast as you want.” I have some projects in mind for stacked exposure motion series (skateboarders/cars/etc.) and it’s currently proving to be very tricky. Buffer is spotty and unpredictable at best. Can’t see using live view much, although was shooting some low angle stuff last night and would have been nice instead of completely lying in the wet grass.

I believe I read about the ability to shoot video, but pull out individual frames as still frames(?) Is this what you did with the telescope example? I’d be interested in hearing more about this, ease of use, still quality, etc.

Light metering: Aperture priority mode defaults to very slightly over-exposed, where the d50 seemed spot-on.

In bright daylight, the viewscreen looks a little soft and makes you think a good photo is washed out, thus taking more photos.

Huh… this should be interesting. My d60 experience has been that it shoots underexposed, but viewing them in camera they look nice, so I actually take less shots.

Thanks for the input. I sincerely appreciate it.

[nobigdeal]

Resolution is quite capable of letting you know when you’re using shiatty lenses.

I found this when I upgraded to the 50D. Lenses that resolved great on my 40D looked like shit on the 50D. (I’m looking at you Sigma 24-70)

Once I figured this out I was much happier with the camera.

[3Horn]

Other than the dropping my D50 into water part, I can pretty much echo everything that orionid said, I love my D90,

The D50 still rides around in my bag, and gets secondary body duty, but the D90 and 35 f/1.8 are my primary body and lens now. And it may be too late, but that’s something else you should look into, canceling the 50mm and going with the 35. It’s about 50% more expensive that the 50, but will still auto focus on your D60, unlike the 50. And it really is capable of doing some nice portrait work. Not to mention you get the benefit of shooting at a normal focal length, as opposed to the 50’s 75mm equivalent.

*Disclaimer: I have both the 50 and the 35, and while the 50 is indeed a great lens, especially for around $100, I personally find the 35 to be a much more useful lens.

[orionid]

I believe I read about the ability to shoot video, but pull out individual frames as still frames(?) Is this what you did with the telescope example? I’d be interested in hearing more about this, ease of use, still quality, etc.

The stars example was actually done in continuous shooting mode so that I could stack full-res frames. It was 100 shots at 10 seconds each, with tape and a small nut holding down the button while I sat inside watching tv. This was how I learned that the continuous mode can only count to 100, whereas a remote trigger resets the count on every shot, and is only limited by the size of your card. I only have a handfull of videos that I’ve done with it, and most are of the variety that would normally be cell-phone videos, but I just happened to have the camera in my hand. I still default to my sony handycam for most video work.

As far as pulling out individual frames, I suppose you could with a video editor capable of such. I was actually considering that on this video from the d90. I do know the sony’s use dvd compression, which interpolates and makes frame recovery near impossible on anything other than still objects.

/edited for speeling and, grammar

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