Tuesday, April 14, 2009
The Nikon D5000 DSLR camera was announced today and is available for preorder by all the retailers. The D5000 is the latest in the line of "baby" Nikon DSLRs. Its feature set is between the D60 and the D90. Like the D60 and the older D40, it does not come with a built in autofocus drive. This limits your lens choices to AF-S and AF-I type lenses unless you want to shoot without autofocus. You'll save money up front for the cheaper camera body compared to the D90, but you'll pay for it with more expensive lenses.
The D5000 is a 12.3 Megapixel DX DSLR. 12.3 megapixels ends up capturing an image at 4,288 x 2,848 pixels. A RAW image at 75 pixels per inch before resampling it in Photoshop to 300ppi would thus produce a print up to 57" x 38" in size. Of course, since most prints aren't made this large, it's great when cropping and doesn't require any resampling for an 8x10 or 8x12. DX refers to the size of the image sensor. It's smaller than a 35mm frame which effectively multiplies the focal length by 1.5 times. This is typical for all but the most expensive models. The D5000 has a movie mode with sound like the D90; however, the D60 doesn't have this feature.
The D5000 is priced at around $730 for the camera body and around $850 for a basic lens. The D90 runs about $1000-$1200 depending on lens options, and the D60 runs $500-$700 depending on lenses purchased.
If you're in this price range, I'd purchase the D90 because of the built-in autofocus drive. It'll give you more options down the road in terms of lenses. If the choice was between the D60 and the D5000, I'd choose the D5000 because the increase in megapixels and the movie mode. The difference between $700 and $850 isn't enough to justify buying the older D60.
The D5000 helps fill the gap between the $500 and $1000 price points, which allows people to 'step up' their camera much easier. I think many people ready to purchase a D60 will be able to be talked into the slightly more expensive but more feature-rich D5000. At least, I'm sure that's what Nikon is banking on.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
For those interested in digital photography, there are many choices of cameras including point and shoot, digital SLRs, and a wide variety of film and slide cameras. This article assumes that you're in the market for a Digital SLR (or DSLR) camera and want to gather opinions on Nikon's lower to medium end.
A few years ago, Nikon offered the D50 and the D80. Both were really well made, where the difference was mainly in Megapixels, a few features, and price. Since then, the D40, D40x, and D60 have replaced the D50. These cameras are a downgrade, in my opinion, because they don't have a built in auto-focus drive. Without that, it seriously limits your lens options and the lenses that are compatible tend to be more expensive because they need autofocus built in. These newer cameras produce larger images, and have a few other features, but the absense of the autofocus drive is a big minus.
On the other hand, the D80 has been replaced with the D90. This includes all the new features in the D40 and D60 and includes the autofocus drive. The D90 camera body is around $900, the D60 camera body is around $500, and the D40 is all but obsolete and runs about the same as the D60 if you can find it.
The best way to look at whether or not to purchase a D60 or a D90 is the number of lenses that you want to eventually have. If you take a two lenses and all else being the same except that one has an autofocus drive and the other doesn't, the one that doesn't will probably be a couple hundred dollars cheaper. Two of these, and you paid for the difference to upgrade to the D90 - especially if you can get a comparible Sigma or other third party brand's lens. You could literally spend 1/2 the price as the Nikkor version with pretty close to the same end result (of course that varies depending on the specific lenses in question).
The D90 is a 12.3 Megapixel digital SLR camera with a FX format sensor (1.5x), live view, a self-cleaning sensor, a movie mode, GPS tagging, ISO 3200, 4.5 frames per second, and in-camera editing.
The D60 is a 10.2 Megapixel digital SLR camera with a FX fomat sensor, 1600 ISO and shoots up to 3 frames per second.
The FX format sensor is the standard digital 1.5x zoom sensor which means that at any focal length, you have to multiply it by 1.5 to determine the true focal length. FX cameras are handy for telephoto lenses, but aren't as good on the wide angle end.
As you can see, the D90 is $400 more, but you get more megapixels, better ISO, more captures for those action shots, and a few other perks like movie mode and GPS tagging. Still, the real difference is the D90 has autofocus built in which will allow you to use any lens with a Nikon mount.
