New Nikon Holds a Secret

If you saw it just sitting there, you’d never guess that the new Nikon D90 is a mind-blowing, game-changing camera.

It looks like any other big, black intermediate single-lens reflex camera: much more compact than a professional model, but much bigger and heavier than a pocket camera. An S.L.R. comes with a shoulder strap because it needs one.

What you get in return for looking like a tourist, of course, is the potential for absolutely stunning photos. Thanks to factors like high-quality, interchangeable lenses, a huge light sensor and high-speed circuitry that reduces shutter lag to zero, the pictures you get from an S.L.R. generally make pocket cameras’ output look like amateur hour.

The new D90, which arrives in stores next month, happens to be a superb S.L.R. At $1,000 (or $1,300 with a new 18-105 millimeter, image-stabilized lens), it’s priced neatly between the D300 (Nikon’s bigger, heavier, all-metal professional model, $1,650 online) and the intermediate D80 ($720 online), which will soon be discontinued. (These last two are body-only prices; lenses are not included.)

The specs and features sit neatly between those cameras, too. The D90 has a 12.3-megapixel CMOS sensor that measures 1.14 inches diagonally (24 by 16 millimeters), a hair smaller than on professional cameras. At start-up (or on command), the D90 gives that sensor a little shudder to shake off dust that may have entered the camera during a lens change, in that way avoiding shadowy specks in the photos.

This camera is rocket-fast, too. Autofocus is nearly instantaneous, shutter lag (the delay after the button is pressed) is zero, and you can snap 4.5 photos a second for as long as you keep the button pressed.

There are some new features: a clever calendar that lets you hunt down photos by date, right on the camera; an effect that simulates the spherical view of a fish-eye lens; a jack for an external G.P.S. receiver that is coming from Nikon (for geotagging pictures); a function that straightens off-kilter horizons; face-recognition autofocus; and so on.

But none of that is the big news.

If you want a hint, consider the D90’s Live View feature, with which you can frame a photo using the extremely sharp three-inch screen.

This, of course, is how every compact camera on earth works, but until Olympus pioneered the system a couple of years ago, S.L.R.’s required you to compose a shot by pressing your eye to the optical viewfinder. The screen was used exclusively for playing back pictures.

The challenge, on an S.L.R., was figuring out what to do with the mirror inside. Ordinarily, it bounces light from the lens into the eyepiece; it flips out of the way, exposing the sensor, only at the instant a photo is taken. To display a live image on the screen, you’d have to lock that mirror out of the way, so that the sensor receives light continuously.

That’s exactly what happens when you press the Live View button on the D90. You hear a little clack — that’s the mirror flipping aside — and a live video image appears on the screen. Now you can shoot photos at angles where holding the camera to your head just wouldn’t work; it comes in handy more often than you might think. At this point, you can also zoom in to assure perfect focus.

There are compromises, though. When the mirror is out of the way, the D90 relies on a slower, contrast-detection autofocus system; it can sometimes take several seconds to lock focus in Live View mode.

But don’t knock Live View. It, after all, is the key to the breakthrough feature of the D90, the secret that turns it into a completely new kind of recording instrument. Ready?

The D90 is the first S.L.R. in the world that can record video.

High-definition video, at that. Stunning, vivid, 720p, widescreen, 1024-by-720, 24-frames-per-second video, with the color and clarity that only an S.L.R. can provide.

Evidently, it occurred to some engineer: “Hey, we’re already showing a video image. Isn’t that, in essence, what Live View is? Maybe we could figure out a way to record it!”

CONTINUED : Godsend for independent filmakers

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