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.

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.

Nikon and Canon 50mm f1.8 Prime Lens

For around $100, you can buy a great lens for low light situations. It's a 50mm f1.8 prime lens and is available for both Nikon and Canon.

The 1.8 maximum aperture allows a ton of light to get to your digital sensor and makes it possible to get a good exposure for low light sitations such as dawn, dusk, and indoors. The aperture is essentially the hole in your lens. Think of the number like a fraction, so 1.8 is like 1/1.8. The smaller the number on the bottom of the fraction, the larger it is. For example, if you have a 28-70mm f4-5.6 lens, the biggest your aperture can get is f4 at 28mm and f5.6 at 70mm. F1.8 allows in more than double the amount of light than F4.

There is a side effect of having a large aperture, which is the depth of field. The larger the aperture (the lower the number), the more narrow your depth of field is. Depth of field is how much of the picture is blurry from the point where you've focused it. This is great to bring the focus to your subject and is often used for portraits, images of birds, and macros.

Also, keep in mind that your ISO plays a part in how your picture is exposed. Typically in low light, even with your aperture set at f1.8, you'll need to increase your ISO number. On my camera, the maximum ISO is 1600, so I'll set the camera to that, use aperture priority, and manually set the aperture to f1.8. That way, the camera will figure out the best shutter speed to use. You'll need a shutter speed of at least 1/80th of a second to shoot a sharp image with your 50mm lens (since there's a 1.5x modifier when dealing with DX style DSLR cameras.)

Dealing with aperture, shutter speeds, and ISO to get a good exposure is often confusing at first. Once you figure it out though, it really opens up your possibilities. To recap, for low light, make the f-stop or aperture use the smallest number possible, the highest ISO possible, and your shutter speed as slow as you can without compromising sharpness. For this lens on my Nikon D50, the settings then would be f1.8, 1/80th second or faster, ISO 1600. Modify it from there to your particular situation.

For another example of dealing with these three exposure components, see my review on a 500mm Sigma Telephoto lens.

This image of three deer was taken in Montana with a telephoto lens.  We scared them off when we first saw them and were lucky enough to find them over the next ridge.  There were several others including a few bucks nearby. They crossed the road 100 yards or so in front of us and bolted up a mountain. 

Montana is full of wildlife photographic opportunities.  In the same weekend, we saw deer, antelope, moose, elk, and bison.

I used this lens to capture images of wildlife such as deer, moose, and elk.  500mm was enough to get a close up shot of several large animals, while allowing me to keep my distance.  This made it possible to photograph the animals without disturbing them.  I used it in combination with a monopod for stability since the lens is bulky and heavy. 

Having the ability to go from 50 to 500 mm was a nice feature.  It gave me a lot of room to adjust to a situation, although to be honest, I was almost always using it at it's full 500mm focal length. 

To give you an idea of its magnification, the normal human eye sees at 50mm.  My digital camera has a natural 1.5x magnifier, which makes 500mm really 750mm.  In other words, objects become 15 times closer than normal.

The biggest the aperture can get at 500mm is f/6.3.  Typically, to shoot a sharp image, a person should shoot at a fraction of a section that is faster than the relative focal length.  In other words, at 500mm (really 750mm), to shoot a clear image, you should shoot at 1/800 second or faster.  I had a monopod, so I pushed it to 1/640 second on some shots, but even then I could tell the difference.  1/800 second at f/6.3 doesn't leave a lot of light for the camera, therefore, I was almost always shooting at my camera's highest ISO which is 1600.  This makes the shots a little grainer, but it's a price I had to pay to expose the image correctly.  Even still, some of the images required a little post production in Photoshop to get the exposure to the correct levels.

Here are two examples of photographs taken with the Sigma 50-500 on a Nikon D50:

Jumping Deer
Bull Elk

The lens costs around $1000 and I'd recommend it to anybody looking for a telephoto lens in that price range.