Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the introduction of its newest DX-format digital SLR, the D90. More than just a new camera, the D90 represents a new era of digital SLR fun and creativity.

The first thing that will amaze photographers about the D90 is its stunning image quality, which takes its inspiration from Nikon’s flagship DX-format digital SLR, the D300. The D90’s image sensor and 12.3 effective megapixels combine with Nikon’s exclusive EXPEED image processing to deliver outstanding images featuring fine details, smooth tones, rich colors and low noise across a wide ISO sensitivity range.

The D90 is the world’s first* digital SLR camera with a movie shooting function that delivers genuinely cinematic results, enhanced by the creatively shallow depth of field made possible by the DX-format sensor. This is further refined by the optical quality and broad selection of NIKKOR lenses — the same lenses relied upon by professional photographers the world over. Thanks to the D90’s large image sensor, D-Movie images exhibit less noise than those of a typical camcorder, most notably in low-light situations.

The D90 also provides remarkable performance and operability, featuring Nikon’s exclusive Scene Recognition System that advances precision in auto focus, auto exposure, and auto white balance in diverse shooting situations. Live View mode allows shooting while confirming the subject on the large 3-in., approx. 920k-dot high-density color LCD and offers three contrast-detect AF modes to allow photographers to focus on any point in the frame, enabling a greater variety of composition. In addition to wide and normal area AF, the D90 offers face priority AF in Live View mode for even sharper pictures of people.

All of these powerful features and more are housed in a compact, comfortable-to-hold body, with intuitive controls. In other words, the D90 is a camera that will satisfy the requirements of passionate photographers who demand superior image quality and crave exciting new photographic possibilities.

Nikon D90 Feature Highlights

D90’s 12.3 effective megapixels provides outstanding resolution, delivering images with extraordinarily defined detail and expanded enlargement capacity. The extremely wide sensitivity range of ISO 200 to 3200 delivers incredibly low-noise characteristics throughout. Furthermore, sensitivity can be increased to Hi 1 (ISO 6400 equivalent) and decreased to Lo 1 (ISO 100 equivalent) to expand shooting versatility. The camera also employs the Image Sensor Cleaning function that works to free image-degrading dust particles from the sensor’s optical low-pass filter.

D-Movie: the world’s first* D-SLR movie mode

In a world first* for D-SLRs, the D90 offers a movie function, allowing you to shoot 320 x 216 pixels, 640 x 424 pixels or HD720p (1,280 x 720 pixels) movies at the professional smoothness of 24 frames per second in motion JPEG format. The D90’s sensor, which is much larger than the sensor of a typical camcorder, ensures higher image quality and exceptional low-noise, high ISO sensitivity performance, even during movie shooting. Capturing creative movie clips or the drama of life’s moving moments is further enhanced by the wide selection of incredibly sharp NIKKOR interchangeable lenses that are available, from fisheye to wide-angle to super-telephoto. And Micro NIKKOR lenses bring the magic of extreme close-up imagery to movie making.Note: Autofocus and some other functions are not available when recording movies.

Scene Recognition System integrated with Face Detection System

The D90 precisely reads the color and brightness information of each scene from the 420-pixel RGB sensor, and applies this to auto focus, auto exposure and auto white balance. The D90 also recognizes human faces using the new Face Detection System, data which is incorporated during calculation, resulting in faces with newfound definition and accuracy as well as enabling face priority AF in Live View mode and immediate zoom into people’s faces in playback zoom.

Easy-to-use Live View mode

One press of the Live View button activates the D90’s Live View mode, delivering a bright, crisp image to the 3-in., approx. 920k-dot color LCD and allowing comfortable shooting without looking through the viewfinder. There are three contrast-detect AF modes that let you focus on any point in the frame: Face priority AF automatically detects up to five faces and focuses on that calculated to be the closest. Wide area AF offers a large AF area suitable for handheld shooting, and normal area AF provides focus with pinpoint accuracy when using a tripod. And when Nikon VR (Vibration Reduction) lenses are in use, photographers will enjoy the benefit of a VR-smoothed image, even in Live View mode.

Nikon’s Picture Control System enables users to customize the look and mood of images. Six original setting options are available — Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait and Landscape — for easy customization of image preferences.

Active D-Lighting for smooth tone reproduction in high-contrast lighting

The D90’s Active D-Lighting accurately restores details in the shadows and highlighted areas, which are often lost in high-contrast lighting situations, by localizing tone control while shooting. There are four levels, including the new “Extra High.” Active D-Lighting can be used manually or set to Auto mode. It is also possible to bracket your pictures, allowing the capture of one image with Active D-Lighting and one without.

Versatile, practical 11-point AF system

Thanks to the Multi-CAM 1000 autofocus module, the D90’s 11-point AF system offers fast and precise autofocus coverage across the frame with the most sensitive AF sensor operating from the center. In addition, the D90 features versatile AF-area modes to handle most shooting situations: Single-point AF is recommended for stationary subjects, dynamic-area AF for moving subjects, auto-area AF for spontaneous shooting and 3D-tracking (11 points) AF for when you want to change the composition after focusing on your subject.

Bright pentaprism viewfinder featuring frame coverage of approx. 96%

The D90 has a precise eye-level pentaprism viewfinder with approx. 96% (centered) frame coverage and an easy-to-view 19.5 mm eyepoint (at -1.0 m^-1). The built-in 16-frame superimposed grid display can be activated to assist in the creation of better-balanced compositions.

The D90 features Advanced Scene Modes: Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, Sports and Night Portrait. These modes not only adjust exposure and image processing, but also judge the optimum Active D-Lighting and Picture Control settings to obtain the best results. The D90 also recognizes if VR (Vibration Reduction) is on or off and minimizes noise even in dimly lit scenes.

Extensive palette of in-camera Retouch Menus

The D90’s designers incorporated a wide variety of image editing functions, making it easy for users to enhance images within the camera. The D90 introduces several new retouch options: Distortion Control adjusts lens aberration, Straighten corrects inclination of the image, while Fisheye produces optical effects similar to a fisheye lens.

Engineered for precision and durability

Accurate exposures rely on precise shutters and the D90’s electronically timed shutter mechanism was specifically engineered for long, accurate service. To ensure this, D90 shutters, assembled in D90 bodies, underwent exhaustive 100,000 shutter-release cycle testing.

Nikon D90 Other Features