One thing to bear in mind is that the microphone in the camera’s body picks up any sounds that your hands make when touching the camera, so a lot of camera handling (such as turning a focus ring) can make for a lot of clunking and thunking sounds in your audio track. You can focus manually, though, and try to keep your subject in focus as you pan and move the camera. This means that if you and your subject move closer to each other, your focus will be wrong, which can make casual shooting much more difficult than it is with a point-and-shoot. Unlike a point-and-shoot camera, the D90 does not continuously autofocus when shooting in movie mode–it can’t, for the same reason that it can’t quickly autofocus in Live View.

The video feature is easy to use, but if you’re accustomed to shooting video with a point-and-shoot camera, you’ll have to think a little differently. While the D90 is an excellent still camera, the biggest buzz around it stems from its ability to shoot high-definition 720p video at 24 frames per second. Live View also makes for more relaxed tripod-mounted shooting. Live View is a great feature for any time when you need to shoot over your head, or down low, or in any other situation where your camera position makes looking through the viewfinder impossible. The rest of us can simply edit our images as we need. This is a nice addition for tailoring the camera’s processing to very specific conditions, though this feature is really only worth the trouble if you are a high-volume, fast-turnaround shooter. Nikon has expanded the Picture Controls feature (preset image processing parameters that allow the camera to adjust JPEG images in-camera) by allowing you to define custom Picture Controls using bundled software. This is a fairly common feature on SLRs now, and it definitely does help reduce dust troubles, so it’s a welcome addition to the D90.

When you power the camera up or down, the D90 vibrates its sensor to shake off dust. The D90 also includes this feature, but adds a sensor cleaning mechanism to the camera. The D80 included an Image Dust Off feature, which allowed you to shoot a dust “reference” picture that could be used by Nikon’s software to remove dust spots from your image. Burst speed has been increased from 3 fps on the D80 to 4.5 fps on the D90, and the D90 also has an improved servo focus, which tracks a moving object and keeps it in focus.

ISO sensitivity for the D80 was 100 to 1600 that’s been improved to 200 to 3200 on the D90, with a special boost feature that lets you achieve a slower ISO 100 and a faster ISO 6400. This LCD is exceptional, and while it’s still not good enough to accurately gauge focus, its brightness and clearness is a joy to work with. The D90 has a 3-inch, 920,000-pixel LCD Nikon first used this LCD on theĭ300 ( ).

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