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Nikon Announces D90 Digital SLR - First Ever With Movie Mode
D-Movie Mode
When a new product is launched, you expect new features - usually in the form of minor upgrades. But with the D90, they're not all marginal improvements, and one of them in particular is ground-breaking. Nikon is the first to bring to market a Digital SLR with a built-in movie mode which Nikon is dubbing "D-Movie Mode." This isn't your mom's point-n-shoot movie mode - we're talking full 720p high-definition bliss, with [less blissful] mono sound. Nikon has a video on their site which shows off the movie mode, but I wasn't satisfied with that. I wanted to see some real-world, hands-on footage from a professional. So I contacted Chase Jarvis... 720p Footage by Chase Jarvis Chase Jarvis, photographer extraordinaire, was lucky enough to get his hands on not just one, but five of Nikon's D90s. He was kind enough to provide us with 3 clips they'd shot with the camera, completely unedited and straight from the source. To cut down on the file size, I combined the 3 clips and trimmed them to get rid of unnecessary footage; I also added in some titles before exporting in iMovie, but otherwise the footage has not been modified. Note: Click the image below to view 720p video footage from the D90. Video will open in a new window. File size is approximately 30MB. 
Looking at Chase's footage, this video mode really does seem impressive. There are a couple things that I'm not sure about, though: focus accuracy and exposure. In the skateboarder clip, the camera was a bit back-focused, but I'm not sure if that was an issue related to man or machine. It also appears that the camera is adjusting the exposure on-the-fly, so some slight flickering is apparent. One question I had for Chase was whether there's a defined limit to how long you can record a video for - the pre-production D90s they were provided with had an early firmware bug which did essentially limit the video length, but aside from that bug (which will presumably be fixed) there are no set time limits aside from your memory card's capacity. Unfortunately, it's still hard to make any definitive conclusions based on what we've seen so far. I'd really have to get my hands on one and put it through some worst case scenarios to see how it truly holds up. In any case, it looks promising, and I can't wait to see more. What do you think of having a movie mode on a DSLR? Would you buy a D90 specifically for that feature? Share your thoughts - leave a comment!
Page 1: Introduction, What's New & Photos
Page 2: Specifications Page 3: D-Movie Mode & 720p Footage by Chase Jarvis 
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MiguelLane
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